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ESSAYS 


OF 


/ 

A, B, Hyde, D, D„ 

Professor of Ancient languages at Denver University. 


4 


i 


THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 


W. J. HUTCH INSOW, 

1885. 



Tz> 









Copyright, 1884, by W. J. Hutchinson. 


TO 

Mira Smith Hyde, 

seeing that to her pure taste and patient criticism, and to her 
sympathetic appreciation is chiefly due any merit this book may 
have, it is tenderly inscribed 

BY 

HER HUSBAND. 


Introductory Note. 


——“+=- 

'J'he reason which this modest volume offers for its existence is 
direct and intelligible. Above the horizon of history—which is 
never a plane like that of ocean or prairie—arise, as the peaks 
in our mountain walls of Colorado, eminent personages, seen 
from afar. These personages, men and women, were not trees 
or stones ; they had parentage, friendships, and surroundings. 
They illustrate our human nature ; and an inquiry into their 
character, career, and influence is a refreshing and a remunera¬ 
tive exercise. These people explain also the age which produced 
them: for they were debtors to the environments which they 
adorned. They “received from it in mist what they gave back 
in rain and thus through them we learn of the thought, feel¬ 
ing, and behavior prevailing at their time. Some of these Essays 
are studies of such people, and—in them—of the imperishable, 
unwithering science of humanity. 

It is also good for the mind to make foray into the domain of 
abstract ideas. Sentiments in the form of proverbs and axioms 
are afloat (and long have been so) which it is well to challenge. 
If, according to Socrates, an untested life is no life at all, then 



Introductory Note. 


an untested proverb has no right to currency. It should give 
account of itself. It may prove better or worse than we were - 
reckoning: it may really contain “one man’s wit and many men’s 
wisdom. ” 

Noise forces itself upon the market, and becomes the element 
in which we live and move: it seems necessary to our being. 
But silence is older than sound; or, as the Veda has it, the two 
are twins. One or the other of these statements must be true. 

If the later bom or more demonstrative has gained undue emi¬ 
nence, we should look into the matter; or in our own minds, at 
least, correct the error, and hold both in fair and reasonable 
equity. 

Thus the Essays are the recreations of a busy life, after a 
fashion congenial with the writer’s calling. Should they for a 
passing hour bring cheerful company and animating thoughts to 
other minds—especially should they awaken something better 
than they bring, they will have done their errand. 

The Authob, 





COHTEHTS, 


PAGE 


I. 

KNOWLEDGE AND POWER .9 

ESSAY I. : Knowledge and Poweb : Examining and 
Illustrating the Baconian Maxim.—An Investigation into 
the distinct Nature of each, and their Relation to each 
other; with Suggestions of their respective and related 
Values and Methods of Increase. 


H. 

A THOUSAND YEARS AGO .33 

ESSAY II. : A Thousand Yeabs Ago : An Inquiry into 
the state of the World in the latter part of the IXth Cen¬ 
tury.—Its foremost Men and leading Nations.—Pictures 
of Transactions memorable in History.—Comparison of 
the IXth Century with our own. 



Contents. 


m. 

PHILOSOPHY of the UNUTTERED ... 61 

ESSAY III. : The PhiiiOsophy op the Unuttered : 
The relation of Speech to Silence. —The province and 
oapacity of Speech; the Domain of the Unspoken; its 
breadth in various spheres of Intellectual Activity, its sup¬ 
port of the Spoken, its higher Dignity, and the Profit of 
Cultivating it. 


IV. 

GUSTAV US ADOLPHUS .84 

ESSAY IV. : Gustavus Adolphus : The Career of the 
noblest of Swedish kings and of Protestant champions, 
the greatest General of his Century, and a Hero of all 
time. —His Character—his Wars—his Death. 


V. 


MISS BURNEY .110 

ESSAY V. : Miss Burney, the first Woman who 
wrote an English Novel : Her early Life—her skill in 
Story-telling—her first Book—her later History. 





Contents. 


VI. 


GAMBETTA .134 

ESSAY VI. : Gambetta : The most conspicuous 
Frenchman of this generation is traced through his 
brief but eventful career.—His part in the war with 
Germany.—His Political Ideas, and his Governmental 
Labors in establishing the present order of Affairs in 
France, are fully given.—His early Death—a Summary. 




- •& 





ESSAYS. 


CHAPTER I. 

KNOWLEDGE AND POWER. 

B EHOLD I show you a mystery! ” It is to mor¬ 
tals past finding out but it is of deep concern to 
us and to all men. We all have an impression about 
it; we all see marginal facts of it. Let us together 
rehearse these facts and these impressions. We shall 
achieve, if nothing more, some outline of our ignor¬ 
ance. 

It is now some three hundred years that Lord 
Bacon has been credited with writing, “Knowledge is 


9 



Essays. 


Power.” Like a proverb indisputable bis utterance 
has passed unchallenged for all have felt that a truth 
is couched in it. One hardly stops to notice that its 
being so compact and quotable is from its being a 
metaphor; as one might in the same fashion say, 
“Food is muscle, ” or “Fuel is steam.” The word 
“is,” which in Hebrew or Latin would not appear, is 
a “little joker” and plays tricks with us. In “This 
is My Body” it has shaken churches and driven na¬ 
tions asunder. Instantly we see that knowledge is 
one thing and power another; that we may think of 
either as entirely distinct from the other. Each has 
its own qualities; each may exist apart from the 
other, and the relation of the two may be analyzed 
and described. The great thinker, prominent among 
thinkers of all times as he was among his peers in the 
spacious times of great Elizabeth, has here brought 
together two of our noblest conceptions. Etymology 
which traces ideas among the forms of words, finds 
between knowledge and power some verbal nearness 
that suggests affinity, possibly identity of origin. 
“He kans and he kens; he shall be our kanning 
(king) ” could never have been the cry with which any 
German tribe chose its king, though Mr. Carlyle, a 
philosopher, not a philologer, may so affirm. “ King ” 
is rather “cyn-ing”, cyn or kin being the “gens” or 
tribe and ing (as Carling, son of Carl), the termina¬ 
tion marking descent, and thus kin-ing is the tribe’s 


10 



Knowledge and Power . 


son, its servant and representative embodiment. Yet 
these words kan and ken are kin by apparent kinship, 
by close family resemblance one may say, such as sis¬ 
ters in one household should have. 

If the human nature be healthful, knowledge is 
gathered in; power is thrust out, and in the interval 
of the containing a marvel of transmutation occurs. 

What is this knowledge which is to some minds so 
dear as to make days and hours given to it joyous 
with the joy of harvest, like a prolonged Hebrew 
Feast of Ingathering? 

It was to John Locke, the first of English metaphy¬ 
sicians, some two hundred years ago, that it occurred 
to set forth Adam and all bom in his likeness as 
beginning the world with vast capacity and nothing 
more. So intense was Adam’s desire to fill this deep 
and deeply felt void within him that it led to his own 
and our undoing; yet we should not be the first if we 
felt proud of some noble elements in the sad matter 
of his fall. 

It was not from vulgar lust that the deed was done 
that wrought our woe. It was from infirmity found 
only in a lofty nature. It was a grievous fault and 
grievously did Adam answer it, but his ruin was maj¬ 
estic, like the Coliseum, and worth restoring. Since 
h im we are all born hungry with that hunger of Eve’s 
and his, and the higher our born grade among our 
fellows the keener and more restless our hunger. “I 


11 



Essays. 


want to know! ” an inter jectional phrase familiar in 
rural New England, has been for some ages the mot¬ 
to accepted, even though unspoken, by that race 
development to which we belong. Each of us has to 
keep some step to the chanting of it. “ Empty man 
would be wise,” said Job, and not tauntingly. How 
much has already become known to men! Human 
knowledge is now of immense extent. “Ye are but of 
yesterday and know nothing” may have been well 
said four thousand years ago but it is to-day not the 
remark for currency and quotation. No one could 
think of describing the broad domain now subject to 
active treatment by the insatiate human mind, or 
even of naming its provinces. That would be to utter 
an edition of Humbolt’s Cosmos , enlarged and brought 
down to date; to go very far beyond the discourse of 
Solomon which ranged from the cedar of Lebanon to 
the hyssop on the wall. But of these provinces there 
are two, one narrow and one boundless; both alike 
fascinating, neither of which can be expected to yield 
to our race the least material benefit. These are the 
Geography of the North Pole and the Science of 
Astronomy. 

These offer knowledge, simply that and nothing 
more. The ardor, amounting to a noble rage with 
which these have been pursued, proves clearly as if 
outlined on a snowy surface the charm that pure 
knowledge has for generous minds. That passion for 


12 



Knoidedge and Power. 


the discovery of the Pole! What could such discov¬ 
ery add to the comfort or efficiency of life? In some 
years, now gone by, an expedition for Northern search 
took as a part of its outfit certain prayers framed by 
an eloquent divine on whose lips have hung audiences 
charmed with his utterances of words sacred and sec¬ 
ular. These prayers, to be recited at the Pole, 
dedicated “these regions to Freedom, to Civilization, 
and to Religion.” The expedition went northward 
but in the space whose bourne no traveler has ever 
reached, these “regions” were never found and the 
fair dedication was never said or sung. Was it once 
the Garden of Eden there? Dr. Warren and the 
Marquis of Saporta find this made probable by copi¬ 
ous possibilities. The Pole has but two dark fort¬ 
nights in its year, and those “long nights of revelry 
and ease” are bright with stars and the aurora. 
Proofs are shown that a continent rich in all that 
could make a terrestrial paradise and under skies 
radiant with light and beauty once centered there. 
The traditions of old peoples and the details of the 
Scriptural story there find ample and harmonious 
explanation. Did man’s occupancy of the earth 
begin at the top? One thing is sure—that return is 
effectually barred. Even were the Pole reached what 
would have been achieved? Who could live there or 
what gallant ship pass by; or how could the welfare 
of man be enhanced? Yet the passion to penetrate 


13 



Essays. 

our frost-hardened barrier flames ever hot in man. The 
thought that something unknown is looking out upon 
us from the North with a calm, stony defiance like 
the expression on the face of the Sphinx is a disquiet¬ 
ude, almost a torment; and a victory however unsub¬ 
stantial would, like the bodiless, intangible rainbow, 
be a thing of joy and beauty. 

Turning to Astronomy, we are at once conscious of 
entrance upon a region fair and exceeding broad. 
But we must mark it as a region that yields us 
knowledge only, not food or clothing or transporta¬ 
tion or any material good. Socrates in his day asked 
whether the students of “things on high” thought 
that with their progress in knowledge they would 
become able at will to cause sunshine, winds and 
rains; or were they content if they might but know 
the laws of all these without being able to produce 
them? To this it was answered: “To know is 
enough.” The governor of Mosul put to Layard, the 
excavator of Nineveh, his idea of Astronomy, with 
energy of rhetoric:— “ Of what use to know that this 
star spinneth around that star, or that this star with 
a tail goeth and cometh again in so many years? 
This may please the generation that eat dirt but it is 
not good for believers. Allah has left infidels to know 
these things here that they may be more miserable in 
the world to come.” 

This primal and most ancient science has always 


14 



Knowledge and Power. 

enchanted to itself a noble train of patient, earnest 
votaries. The stars by their very twinkling invite the 
attentions which they mock and elude. Shepherds, 
astrologers, and mathematicians, workers with tele¬ 
scopes and spectroscopes have gazed and labored and 
passed away from their toil, leaving their subject-mat¬ 
ter precisely as they found it; the sweet influences of 
the Pleiades unbound and the bands of Orion unloos¬ 
ed. Copernicus and Kepler, Newton and Herschel 
did not make two stars shine where one had shone 
before, or add to the lustre and virtue of any single 
planet. Acquaintance with the distance, the compo¬ 
sition, the magnitude and combustion of the sun 
gives no means of softening a hard winter or of quick¬ 
ening a slow summer. 

This utter lack of material result and profit makes 
Astronomy nearly a perfect specimen of unpractical 
knowledge, and in it we see vividly man’s noble long¬ 
ing after knowledge for its own sake and his pride 
and gladness in achieving its attainment. Geology 
brings to light our marbles, minerals, and metals. 
Chemistry gives us soap, bread, and dynamite; to 
Physics we owe the water-wheel, the steam-engine, 
and the telephone, but to Astronomy what more than 
the finding of the ship’s place at sea? 

Yet who would abolish that primal study—the joy 
of ancient men, the arena of the finest modern intel¬ 
lects? Abolish it and there would remain the full 


15 



Essays. 


splendor of the sky; the sovereign sun, the tender 
moon, and the sweet stars would do right on what 
now they do, but they would seem aliens and strang¬ 
ers to us. Astronomy gives us no influence with the 
sun yet it creates in us a brotherly sentiment toward 
him and a slight rudimentary feeling of having mas¬ 
tered him. An entrancing study indeed! the passion 
of many noble workers and the wonder of all men, 
bringing one to largest conceptions of the Infinite. 
Does it affect practical life? Did he truly represent 
it who being urged to patriotic duty pointed coldly 
upward and said: “My country is in the heavens.”? 
It seems, then, that here exists a knowledge in a 
glory and excellence of its own. We may farther on 
find in it a certain arenic, gymnastic relation to pow¬ 
er. It may yet appear that astronomical knowledge 
may be the material of power in some way not now 
known, just as some substance not now recognized as 
combustible may be a future fuel. For the present 
Astronomy is our purest knowledge. 

What, now, is Power? Starting again from Eden 
we seem to find it intended that power in man should 
be more prominent than knowledge. At least power 
was his instant and conspicuous endowment. “Have 
thou dominion! ” was a wonderful utterance, fitted to 
arouse every energy and to awaken boundless, aspir¬ 
ing exertion. So it comes to us in all our dreams. 

“ Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition! ” 


16 



Knowledge and Power . 

may be good council if the ambition be desire of pow¬ 
er in some narrow, selfish, and immoral way, but 
taken at large it ought not to be flung away nor, 
indeed, can it be. Power in some form meets an in¬ 
born craving and is a final desire of our race, the 
satisfactory reward of toil, patience, expenditure, and 
prayer. 

As we spoke of knowledge related to the smallest 
degree of power or to none* as its direct result, so we 
may speak of power destitute of knowledge or with 
so slight a degree of it as not to count. It is now 
five hundred years since Jenghiz Khan was actual 
ruler of a third of the human race. His eastern bor¬ 
der was the Yellow Sea; he watered his horse at a 
river of Poland and disquieted the people of Germany, 
while India was his footstool. No other mortal has 
had and none can ever hope to have sovereignty so 
wide and absolute. He gained his first victory at 
twelve years, and sixty years later he was still in the 
field as conqueror. Yet this Great Mogul was a bar¬ 
barian, ignorant of the art of war, of law, and of all 
politics. The last surviving trace of his colossal em¬ 
pire was exterminated at Delhi in the Sepoy mutiny, 
and of his Golden Capital in Central Asia not a 
vestige remains. His name, at which the world grew 
pale, serves only to show how power without knowl¬ 
edge may appear for a little time and then vanish like 
the mist in the blue of the morning. 


17 



Essays. 

An instance much nearer to us shows another phase 
of our theme: that is, how power may seem to pre¬ 
cede and to be constantly in excess of knowledge. 
The instance is that of Gambetta, the greatest 
Frenchman of this generation. He knew little of law 
or of statesmanship and nothing of war or finance, 
but he was a born orator; and, when rising from 
Paris in a balloon, he landed sixty miles to the south¬ 
west, he stood upon the SQil of France the mightiest 
of Frenchmen. Thereafter he was often failing for 
lack of knowledge, yet his power was inalienable. 
France loved to feel his arm. He was often blind 
but always strenuous, and his funeral was that of a 
nation’s champion, with a majesty of national sorrow 
like the mighty swell of the ocean. His knowledge 
came late and never caught up with his power. 

Let us now turn back to our theme and trace from 
it another line of inquiry. Who is this Bacon that 
speaks thus with authority, not quite, it is true, as 
when Sir Oracle opes his lips, but as a man knowing 
his own mind and sure that he tells a truth? This is 
that Lord Bacon who complained that scholars of his 
own day and of days before his own made common 
life no better by their learning. He had the breadth 
and temper of that Koger Bacon who, four hundred 
years earlier, was counted the inventor of gunpowder 
and who in his weary cell pined to do much for the 
material good of his race. This is the Lord Bacon 


18 



Knowledge and Power. 


who died of a cold, taken in packing a chicken in 
snow to see if it could be thus preserved—an experi¬ 
ment from which have lineally come our refrigerator 
cars and steamers, that beneficent and increasing 
form of commerce. 

This man was, up to his day, as Pope says, ‘‘the 
wisest of mankind.” He held that knowledge is not 
to be hidden in a napkin for its owner’s private keep¬ 
ing—to his shame and to other men’s loss. “Barren 
of results,’’“unfruitful of uses’’were his heavy verdicts 
against much of the learning that had been loudly 
applauded. When such a man says, “ Knowledge is 
power,” he means a sense in harmony with his own 
ideas and his own behavior. He means us to under¬ 
stand that knowledge becomes power; that, if it 
cannot so become, it is unreal, fictitious knowledge and 
that, if it is not made so to become, it is useless 
knowledge. 

Five hundred years ago, and a little more, Good 
Queen Barbara, wife of Edward EH., returning from 
Scotland through Yorkshire, saw coal in lumps 
lying about. From its looking like hardened peat, 
she thought it might be combustible. She tried it: 
and who does not know what coal has done for Eng¬ 
land? Bacon aimed to do with knowledge as 
Barbara had done with coal. He showed what could 
be done with it, and, as men found its uses, they 
sought to increase the supply. His century developed 


19 



Essays. 


into great energy of acquirement, and before its close 
Sir Isaac Newton and the Boyal Academy were earn¬ 
estly at the task of gathering the knowable things of 
the universe. So has use made demand and demand 
called out supply until it has at last come to these 
crowding times of ours. At the head of all this 
movement stands Lord Bacon speaking with tone 
prophetic, and inspiring this motto and watchword: 
“Knowledge is Power.” Queen Barbara’s coal has 
been warmth, light, manufactures, locomotion, music, 
comfort; and equally copious and complex was Ba¬ 
con’s ideal knowledge. 

In our day we are fortunate in being able to name 
a living man who, within the necessary human limits, 
seems an embodiment of the Baconian thought. It is 
Mr. Gladstone. For forty years, to one present, say, 
at a questioning of him in Parliament (as the usage 
is to question there the secretaries on matters of gov¬ 
ernmental concern), his knowledge has seemed 
universal and inexhaustible. A tree does not in the 
soft, moist air of June more steadily absorb and 
assimilate to itself the elements from which its bulk 
is framed than has he from every source within his 
reach drawn truth and built it into himself, and 
built himself therewith. From his early youth until 
now past his three score and ten, a period as long as 
that which Jenghiz Khan spent in the conqueror’s 
saddle, he has been steadily subduing province after 


20 




Knowledge and Power. 


province of out general intellectual domain. It has 
been now a question of Greek, and now one of 
finance; now one of Eastern peoples, now of Church 
doctrine; and now Italian literature that has brought 
into view his vast resources, until the conviction grows 
that no man living can report from his brain so 
broadly and truly of all things human. And none 
can say that this has been knowledge for its own sake 
and unfruitful of uses. The late Duke of Brunswick 
was said to own more diamonds than any uncrowned 
man of our time, but he never cared to wear them or 
dared to show them. They lay in a dark vault like 
an unfathomed cave of ocean, secured by ponderous 
fastenings, shrouded from all gazing, giving the Duke 
only pride of ownership—a lonely, gloomy pride. 

Nor does unused knowledge always keep so safely. 
One may look for it and it be gone ! Is not the mind 
a sealed casket in which we may store with confidence 
what we can ? Is it not true that once known is 
always known ? An honest man living near the 
forty-third parallel had ample cellar space, and being 
of frugal mind filled one room of it with ice for the 
crystalline delight of his summer. Opening it in 
June, he found some rubbish of collapsed saw-dust 
and nothing more. He was amazed; and inquired of 
physicists, “What became of that ice ? Their rejoin¬ 
er, in a humorous way, was something about “rats,” 
but the good man could never see why his winter 


21 



Essays. 


harvest was lost! Just as mysteriously does the 
knowledge which we distinctly remember storing up, 
evanesce ; and we find its packing and encasements, 
and not their contents. 

Nothing of this miserly hoarding and brooding is 
chargeable upon Mr. Gladstone. His stores of 
knowledge have been made to yield power:— 

“They have suffered a sea- change 
Into something rich and strange. ” 

That power has with some good result touched every 
concern of a great nation and nearly every interest of 
mankind. From Ireland to Zululand it has done 
something for England’s honor by doing something 
for the world’s good until, take him for all in all, 
as scholar broad and full, as worker effective and 
unwearied, we feel our kind so elevated in him as 
half to doubt if he be truly of us. It is as if at some 
ancient games a stranger had appeared upon the 
plain and thrown his quoit among the marks of for¬ 
mer casts which tradition had ascribed to the 
demi-gods. Yet he is not a demi-god: he is simply a 
man in whom great stores of knowledge are transmut¬ 
ed into proportionate supplies of power. 

With this great example before us still glowing in 
the fresh colors of life, of a career notable even in 
youth at school, of which we may say that by its con¬ 
tinuity the boy in it was father to the man, we may 
turn and in musing mood may ask: “What do men 


22 



Knowledge and Power. 


look for in school and college ? What is it proposed 
to gain by study and education ? ” “ Knowledge and 

power,” rises the ready answer, “knowledge partly for 
the pleasure of knowing, but chiefly as the material of 
which power may be made. We think that the road 
to dominion lies through school and college.” True. 
So it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. 
A straighter, surer road to power cannot be found, 
and happy he who treads it earnestly and faithfully! 

Experienced teachers always agree that precisely 
the stubborn centre in education is not the acquisi¬ 
tion of knowledge. With some the acquisition seems 
as easy as the breathing of air or the drinking of 
water. The capacity and facility in learning may be like 
that of Humbolt in the first half of this century, or 
Mezzofanti, who knew eighty languages, or of Boeth¬ 
ius, who knew all that was knowable in the sixth 
century. The exact difficulty, the obstinate, is in 
changing knowledge into power. 

It is necessary to the definition of an animal that it 
have a digestive cavity, but small animal can there be 
without actual digestion, the process by which sub¬ 
stance not animal becomes animal substance. Food 
taken in but not digested is much worse than useless; 
digested, it builds the animal and, after building, 
supplies what the activity of the animal consumes. 
How it builds up boys and girls! And when the 
enormous waste of adult life begins, how it makes 


23 



JEssays. 


good that waste: so that we hardly know which to 
admire the more, the building or the support and 
repair! Daniel Lambert at the beginning of the 
century was the largest human animal in England 
or the world. His food went right on building him, 
with no loss by his small waste or active consump¬ 
tion. He had some thirteen hundred pounds of mass 
but no activity. One can easily see what was his 
defect and infirmity, It is clear that beyond a limit 
fixed by symmetry with statue, food should become 
force and be used in either repair or activity. And 
now for the intellectual process by which knowledge 
becomes power in the mind as food becomes force in 
the body, or heat becomes motion in physics. This is 
not the missing but the mysterious link coupling our 
theme and wrapped in the mysterious “is.” For ages 
men were haunted with the thought that there must 
be somewhere among the earth’s furnishings a some¬ 
what, a stone they fancied it, which touching baser 
metals, would turn them all to gold. Philosophers 
grew old and dropped away in restless search for 
that transmuting stone, that long-sought, never-found 
phantom of their day dreams and life dreams. That 
virtue is deposited in the human mind, and roused by 
consciousness of it; imagination bodied it forth and 
gave it material habitation in a stone. Behind the 
vail, and back of the consciousness, knowledge is 
transmuted into power; and one finds himself, like 


24 



Knowledge and Power. 


Diomede in Homer getting gold for brass, the price 
of a hundred oxen for the worth of ten. How heavy 
a darkness, impenetrable even to our keenest, inward 
peering, wraps this crisis of transition! Knowledge 
becomes power as if by leaping in the dark over an 
invisible chasm, and the change eludes all searching. 
In the sweet season of early summer we consider the 
lilies how they grow; but with all our acuteness, 
as we sleep or rise, night or day, the secret baffles 
us: their inmost vital action proceeds we know not 
how. 

For all that the farmer is wholly ignorant of the 
mystery of the sprouting and the growing of plants: 
he drops the seed and tills the growth all the same. 
He is calm in the assurance of the fixed order of 
things; and his utter ignorance of the untraceable, 
indispensable step in the process of getting his crop 
never troubles him. He is certain that on fixed con¬ 
ditions the process will proceed. He finds enough to 
think of in matter of accessories: as tillage, fertaliza- 
tion, variety of crops, and their rotation. 

So it is in educational work. One may facilitate a 
process that he cannot hope to comprehend. The 
course of study in a thousand schools is now practi¬ 
cally one and the same. It represents the wise 
conclusions of many men in many lands as to what is 
best for unfolding and invigorating these minds of 
ours. It is braided of many strands; sometimes, one 


25 



Essays. 


must tliink, of too many, so that one is sometimes 
constrained to the error of learning multa rather 
than multum. But this variety is not merely for 
spice’s sake. A good man in a given region estab¬ 
lished a “ One Study University.” His students were 
to take their studies singly and successively (as wido¬ 
wers take wives, tandum ), not in a cluster (as Mormons 
take wives, abreast). The system was not a success, 
and there came a wise and well-ordered change. It 
was proven, and not for the first time, that in mind¬ 
building it is not good for a study to be alone. Some 
studies give knowledge: geography, history, and the 
like fill us with intelligence. If stock and store of 
facts were all that we needed to acquire, then our 
sole attention might be given to encyclopedias and 
newspapers 

There are other studies that affect directly the in¬ 
visible process of transmutation, giving it energy of 
action and completeness of result. We call these dis¬ 
ciplinary studies. They need to be taken side by side 
with knowledge-giving studies, sharing the hours of 
the same day. Such studies are grammar, logic, and 
the Mathematics. 

That the result of study should be the better from 
the blended action of these is a thing easy to be un¬ 
derstood. Pure flour, even of the best grade, makes 
by itself no proper bread. Yeast, not of itself nutri¬ 
tious, must affect the mass, diffusing its bubbling 
gases among the particles, to make a perfect product. 

26 



Knowledge and Power . 


So knowledge pure and simple lies heavy in the mind 
unless stimulated and energized with another ingredi¬ 
ent. Geometry adds little to one’s intelligence, but 
it is gloriously gymnastic. It was the joy of mighty 
men of old, men of renown. A father once brought 
to a school his son, saying: “ He knows enough: I 
wish him to study only Greek and Geometry.” He 
was a wise father. This is true education: well it 
were so understood ! Knowledge-study should indeed 
have to discipline-study, at least at a given stage, a 
proportion like that of Falstaff’s bread to his beer. 
The result will be a more rapid and complete trans¬ 
muting of knowledge into power. Gladstone’s early 
studies were Greek, Mathematics, and little else, but 
by perfectly transforming that little he came to trans¬ 
form nearly everything, and so to be capable of his 
great achievments. Who, then, is the most success¬ 
ful student ? Not he who gets the most raw material 
into his head. For, who is the greatest poet ? He 
who can most perfectly transfigure life, and in that 
style transfigure the largest amount of life. So is he 
the best student who transforms knowledge into pow¬ 
er the most completely,rapidly, and opportunely; who 
so transforms the largest amount of knowledge; who 
is least burdened with crude, unavailable because un¬ 
transformed, knowledge. 

This view of education is even more important 
to-day than ever before. The world has come to be 


27 



Essays. 

so full of facts! How few of them can one small 
head carry ! Each separate science, as Chemistry, 
demands of its votaries long years of toil to bring 
them through the accumulations of the past to the 
developments which each of these passing days is 
producing. How vast are the concerns of our land 
and of our race ! What need there is of deep-breath¬ 
ing, long-enduring power in men to grapple and 
control them! Mankind is heavy-laden with acquisi¬ 
tions. Nothing but careful education, thorough 
training in the power-giving branches and depart¬ 
ments, such as a knight of old time needed for the 
wearing of his heavy armor, and the wielding of his 
heavy weapons, can enable the coming man to man¬ 
age these acquisitions well and wisely. 

If, now, we turn from science and the severer 
studies to polite learning and general literature, we 
find the same elements as we have already been con¬ 
sidering, and the same relation between them. Life 
transfigured by the imagination becomes poetry; 
untransfigured, it is the narrative actual or the novel 
possible, or, if told in rhythm or metre it is verse. 
We read poetry to gain power through either recrea¬ 
tion or inspiration, but rarely to gain instruction. If 
you think of becoming a poet, do not read poetry 
merely for the pleasure that it gives. Study to find 
what it is that gives the pleasure, but do not waste 
yourself. Head for power. Coleridge wrote a poem, 


28 



Knowledge and Power. 


Cristdbel , that was never popular, having hut one 
reader where his Ancient Mariner had a hundred. 
Scott and Byron read it in their own formative 
periods, and each confesses his obligation to it for a 
degree of poetic virtue which it, like a magnet, im¬ 
parted to their own thinkings. Poets owe large 
debts to preceding poets back to Homer and beyond, 
and the debt is for power transmitted. At the Athen¬ 
ian festival of the torchrace, the runners kept lighting 
their torches from one another as they ran; and he 
whose flame was surest and * strongest did most to 
keep all blazing. Young poets in like manner must 
kindle from such as Shakespeare—the Sirius, the sun 
of their sky. Their effulgent flame will be their own, 
no matter whence lighted, for the fuel must be of 
themselves. The kindling torch they can borrow of 
another: the material supporting the flame cannot be 
borrowed. A poet’s knowledge is as if by some law 
of the poetic constitution like compressed fuel, rich 
beyond its bulk in light and heat. The wonder still 
grows how Shakespeare from so little threw out so 
much: but to do so is a part of the poet’s mission. 
Erasmus Darwin put vast knowledge in verse; Burns 
almost none, yet Darwin was no poet and Burns was 
a master among poets. 

There remains to be taken one more view of our co¬ 
pious and varying theme. Our subject and predicate 
have the same important relation within the bounds 


29 



JEssays. 


of oiir moral nature and in tlie domain of practical 
ethics. There is a moral ignorance and a moral inabil¬ 
ity, and these may easily be kept apart in thought as 
they are found separated in fact. We may behave 
better than we know, doing from some inward im¬ 
pulse the things contained in a law which we have 
never seen or heard; or we may (ah, fact sadly famil¬ 
iar !), we may know far better than we behave. The 
sun shines on nothing so unsightly as moral knowl¬ 
edge, especially in the lively form of conviction , 
without moral power. As that Greek energetically 
said: *'* Of all things the most miserable is to know 
but have no power.” Byron, himself an unhappy 
illustration, says: 

“ It is as if the dead could feel 
The icy worm around him steal, 

Without the power to scare away 
The cold consumer of his clay. ” 

Here human nature, as actually found, is incompetent 
to the transmuting process; and knowledge, it is well 
known, from lack of transmuting, vanishes away. What¬ 
ever may be our theory of the cause of man’s mural 
inability, the fact stares us in the face. Plato, master 
among heathen, concedes that virtue cannot be taught 
as rhetoric is taught. There is a weakness within the 
vail, and by reason of it the transmuting of knowl¬ 
edge into power in morals has special hindrance and 
difficulty. But here, in morals, is the very spinal col¬ 
umn of our human nature. True, the flowers of 


30 



Knowledge and Power. 


genius have sometimes bloomed and brightened over 
the ruin and decay of innocence, but how often has a 
very smell of death hung around what showed so 
brave and fair! 

Here, then, is call for a power beyond our simple 
constitutional outfit, a power in us but not for us, to 
make for righteousness, an influence touching this link 
of change, in morals so weak, and thrilling it with effec¬ 
tive energy. This touch must come from the original 
Creator Spiritus. How sublime a being is man when 
this his organic, ruinous infirmity is healed and he 
is made as effective in the higher realm of morals, 
where his destiny must at last be determined, as in 
the high realm of intellect, or in the lower but rich 
and goodly domain of animal life and every-day phys¬ 
ical action. 

The view’s of our theme now herein given agree 
with the workings of minds as seen by a teacher dur¬ 
ing a professional life-time. The theme tells the 
source from which flows life to the teacher’s energies 
and efforts. He finds that in demonstrating its reali¬ 
ty in the minds that come within his reach the hope 
of his calling, the occasion of his joy and pride. 

From our schools and colleges go out every year 
conspicuous examples proving how the process which 
we have been illustrating proceeds, and its results 
here shown come true. Every generation furnishes 
its own leaders, as every war its own heroes. Leaders 


31 



Essays. 


must have more than born capacity; like orators they 
must become. They lead because they ken and they 
kan. Increase of means of instruction and training, 
seeing that the raw material is boundless of supply, 
means increase of .fitted leaders. Should these come 
to be in excess, the overflow can do service in the 
ranks, for who can obey like those who have learned 
to command ? 

If our educational appliances are well used, how 
rich in leadership should be this coming genera¬ 
tion ! Illustrious names, like new stars in the vacant 
places of the sky, will go upon the ever-lengthening 
scroll of fame. Why not ? Great men in every de¬ 
partment of human activity, with name and fame 
known long and far, came to be such by early training 
in the mystery of getting power from knowledge, and 
the boy was father of the man. If students of to-day 
master the noble and inspiring art, the people of to¬ 
morrow shall not be saying that the men of old were 
better. They will see the fruit of the doings of their 
own men shake like Lebanon, and the world growing 
rich and clean and strong for the joy and blessing of 
generations still onward and beyond. 



32 




CHAPTER n. 

A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 

T HE living present comprehends for us the charm 
of life. In it march with rhythmic tramp, like 
that of an army column, our loves, our joys, our 
strifes; and from their line few of us ever deviate: we 
that do so do it rarely. We work in the affairs of to¬ 
day ; we recreate ourselves among the possibilities of 
to-morrow; we have little inclination toward the dusty 
death of yesterday. Then, too, we seem constantly 
at the margin of a new order of things. A continu¬ 
ous morn is rising and its tinted dawn falls upon our 
faces. The Virgilian verse seems in any of our days 
more true and timely than in the Augustan days: “ A 
new series of ages is starting on its round.” 

Is it not strange, then, that all the by-gone seems 
to us as yesterday when it is past, related to our act- 


33 


Essays. 


ual affairs only as the geologic periods are related to 
the summer that now bears our harvests or the win¬ 
ter that now whitens our fields. Therefore it is only 
for an hour that one cares to turn from the living 
present and the flushing future toward the grey and 
monitory past which, like the Spinx of Egypt, with¬ 
out voice or motion is ever “staring right on, with 
calm, eternal eyes.” Yet from that past was in truth 
this present born, and in those stark and silent feat¬ 
ures can some of the lineaments of our present be 
discerned. Or, if no likeness be seen, the contrast itself 
may be instructive. One lesson which it concerns us 
to make useful is written for our learning. It is that 
as the present is rapidly becoming the past and tak¬ 
ing its fixed place in history, so it must there abide 
the criticism of those who are to be, at whatever dis¬ 
tance, our successors. As under their eyes it concerns 
us to do our work in harmony with our circumstan¬ 
ces, which is the ideal, the perfection of all human 
doings. 

A thousand years ago ! The gate swings in silence 
and we enter to look around. We stop at 884 of the 
Christian era. Over the path which we quickly trav¬ 
erse, have come thirty generations through the 
experience of mortal life, have wrought their good 
and evil, and with most of their works have been re¬ 
manded to oblivion. The light from Motakem’s 
green banner, which then waved in the sunbeams on 


34 




A Thousand Years Ago. 


the wall of Bagdad, has hardly yet reached a star of 
the tenth magnitude; and while it has been speeding 
its way what deeds have been wrought on this earth ! 
We are back of nearly all the arts that now aid the 
labor and promote the happiness of men. We are 
back of gunpowder, the chief ally of modern war, and 
we find its forerunner in that liquid fire which more 
than once saved the Greek Capital from barbarian 
hosts. We are back not merely of the strange things 
which living men have seen invented and set at work, 
but we are back of saw-mills and grist-mills, back of 
the art of printing, and of the mariner’s compass, 
back of the musical scale, the telescope, of the scien¬ 
ces, and even of the languages of Modern Europe; 
back of national debts, and of standing armies. The 
American, the Australian, and most of the African 
World are as yet unknown to civilized man. Even 
England has not yet become the heart of the world. 
How nearly all that gives the world its wealth and 
life, its amplitude, seems to be in front of us; and we 
can hardly believe that still behind us are great em¬ 
pires, as Egypt and Nineveh; great law-systems and 
literatures, as of Borne and Greece; great religions, 
as of Israel. Around us are national fabrics built from 
that ruined Coloseum, the Boman Empire, which from 
its former extent of two thousand miles northward 
and three thousand eastward, has shrunk until Caesar 
hardly holds more than Constantinople. 884 is the 


35 



Essays. 


keystone of the arch of the Dark Ages, that dreary 
interval between the ancient life and the modem life, 
the keystone not so much in date as in character. 

Let us inquire of the condition of Western Europe, 
of Eastern Europe, and of the realm then held by the 
Saracens. The picture that oftenest met the eye in 
Western Christendom would be that of a castle on a 
hill, at the foot of which spreads a village of laborers. 
There is a church-edifice, pretentious and perhaps de¬ 
serving, but around it are mere huts. These have no 
glass windows, no wooden floors. The open door 
gives the inmates their chief light and comfort in 
summer. The cold and dark of winter are meagerly 
relieved by the fire that sends its smoke out by a 
rude hole in the roof. The furnishings are few and 
simple, and the table of the poor was scant of modem 
viands. No potatoes, indian-corn, turkeys, or toma¬ 
toes were known. Bread, usually of oats or barley, 
flesh of domestic animals, fish in large supply, cab¬ 
bage, turnips, milk at times, beer and wine formed 
the diet which might be served to the nobles on silver 
plate, but was taken in the fingers. In the country 
agriculture, with a few simple mechanical arts, was 
the employment of the people. Their education was 
nothing. When the emperor could not write, we 
may easily guess the attainments of the peasant. 
What they knew of the Faith came to them chiefly 
through the sacraments, though Latin sermons were 


36 



A Thousand Years Ago. 


still intelligible to the common people. Their amuse¬ 
ments were in song, dance, and athletics. The 
wandering minstrel was welcome at the castle to 
enliven the monotonous existence of the ladies and 
their maids; at the cottage his art commanded the 
best of its table and shelter. The poor people toiled 
to maintain a lord who had led them into the land as 
common soldiers; or who, finding them there, had 
made them his own by right of conquest. Armed 
with spear, axe, or bow they followed him to petty 
quarrels of his own, or to wars to which he was called 
in aid of his sovereign—which all went to perpetuate 
their own poverty and dependence. In some towns 
trade and manufactures thrive, and here is a degree 
of wealth and general culture. There are also mom 
asteries where piety and learning are cherished, 
abiding the day of their diffusion. On the whole, we 
must expect to see ill-conditioned people, not our 
equals in bodily vigor, but, for all that, men of like 
passions as we are. We shall see the irrepressible hu¬ 
man heart with its familiar moods of love and hate, 
of ambition and enterprise, of tyranny and falsehood, 
of piety and truthfulness, like the sea beneath the 
sun and wind—always changeful and yet always the 
same. 

The nation with which we have our chief relation, 
the centre of the modern world, was no longer the 
civilized Britain of the Homans. It was now four 


37 



jEssays. 


hundred and thirty-five years since the little district 
of Denmark that still bears the name of England had 
sent its first adventurers to Britain. By dint of hard 
fighting they had made their way from the gravel- 
point of Ebbesfleet (where first English feet touched 
the land which they have made famous) over most of 
the island, exterminating the Britains or driving 
them to the rough regions westward, where they 
have lingered as Welsh (Foreigners) on their ancient 
soil. There were several Saxon kingdoms, and even 
the name English was hardly known. It was through 
the moral predominance of the Englisc of the North¬ 
western kingdom that them name and dialect became 
the standard, giving the Saxon realm its designation 
and its language. The “ Overlord,” the true king of 
England, was the noble Alfred, alone the “Great” 
among all rulers of the island to our own day. A 
kinglier king never sat upon a throne. He was de¬ 
scended from Cerdic, who became king of this region 
after the battle of Charford, in 519. Cerdic was 
reputed a descendent of Woden, a Saxon deity; and 
as Alfred’s blood, however diluted, is in Victoria’s 
veins, her majesty may make comfortable claim of 
high descent, traceable in winding bouts for 1365 
years: and how far beyond ? 

Alfred after dreadful battles had now rest from his 
enemies, and was giving his fulness of energy to 
works of peace. There was need of it. Few priests 


38 



A Thousand Years Ago. 

and fewer nobles could read. Alfred established 
schools of every grade and gave them his personal 
care. He cherished religion; he perfected and ad¬ 
ministered law; he did all that a king, a warrior, a 
scholar, and a saint could, in human infirmity, accom¬ 
plish for his people’s good. Curiously, as if harbinger 
of the present English occupancy, he had just sent a 
commission as far as India to find anything that could 
benefit England; and, at least, to enlarge the knowl¬ 
edge and inspire the enterprise of his people. The 
Danes had been his foes, and they were to be the 
same again. Under their banner—the Black Raven— 
they had swept every sea and wasted every shore. 
They had lately bound to a tree King Edmund, as a 
target for their arrows; and the place of his death is 
still Bury St. Edmunds. Alfred, who at the head of 
his own forces fought more than fifty battles, was 
their only conqueror. Hastings, their last great lead¬ 
er, was defeated by the English hero, was converted, 
and settled as Alfred’s faithful vassal on English soil. 

On the Continent had now been concluded the ca¬ 
reer of that Charles of whose name Magnus , the 
Great, is the fixed termination. The grand-father of 
Charlmagne, Charles Martel, had in delivering France 
from Saracen invasion, proved himself the greatest 
general in Europe. His father, Pepin, as mayor or 
executive for the Frankish king, had made the throne 
clear for his giant son who looms over the beginning 


39 



Essays. 


of the ninth century". Pope Zachary, needing help 
against the Lombards, wisely decided that France be¬ 
longed to the man who had it Childeric, the foolish 
descendent of the great Clovis, was, with shaven 
head, boarded for life at a convent; and Pepin of 
statue four and a half feet, leBref !—handed the 
crown to Charlemagne—eight feet of statue!—whose 
family likewise in hardly more than a century ended 
in fools that were pushed aside by Hugh Capet. This 
Capet’s ancestor, traceable through males, was St. 
Arnoul, who died in 640, His lineal descendants, 
Bourbon and Orleans, are to-day watching for the 
crown which their ancestors wore for ten unbroken 
centuries. Charlemagne was often cruel, but he did 
many noble deeds. To encourage learning he him¬ 
self in later years attempted the art of writing, but 
the hand that had so long wielded sword and sceptre 
was unteachable at the pen. Nor could his son do 
better: for the oldest known specimens of the French 
(except the Beichenau Definitions) are dictated by his 
sons, one being a convent charter, the other a milita¬ 
ry motto. Thus we may, in passing, call the French 
a thousand years old, though the Definitions are a 
century older: so that the French is nearly twice as 
old as our English. 

Charlemagne had before his death bidden his eldest 
son take from the altar and wear a crown associate 
with his own. Two other sons were crowned, and 


40 



A Thousand Years Ago. 


their united diadems represented that huge and cost¬ 
ly crown worn by their mighty sire, and now in the 
Treasury at Vienna. His gigantic body was buried 
near his favorite residence at Aix, in state worthy of 
his name. It sat in a marble chair within the vault, 
with sceptre grasped, and pilgrim-script, as emblems 
of his power, his faith, and his last long journey. 

Pepin had for the repose of his soul given to the 
Pope a small tract of land at Ravenna, in the north¬ 
east of Italy. A Bishop thus became a Prince, with 
temporal cares of finance and justice; and this terri¬ 
tory was until our day in the Pope’s ownership. Now, 
the Supreme Pontiff holds but the Vatican and the few 
acres of its environs: beyond this he is “Mr. Peechi,” 
simply a citizen. 

At the date which we make central, Charles the 
Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, had held France, 
and his cousins ruled after a fashion the rest of the 
Empire. They were rapidly degenerating, and in 888 
Charles the Fat went the way of Childeric—shaven 
of head and boarded in a convent. This Charles the 
Bald did not inherit his grandsire’s flowing hair or 
the mighty brain beneath it. He had, however, an 
excellent inclination to patronize learning, and a rude 
relish for the pleasures of literature. Hearing of 
one, John Erigena, an Irishman, the fame of whose 
wit and learning had been wafted from Erin to the 
Continent, he sent for him by honorable invitation 


a 




jEssays . 


and escort, made him director < of what educational 
system was then in France, and, until his own decease 
in 887, showed him all royal favor. Erigena was a pure 
Celt and of real genius; and it is amusing to see, at 
our long distance, so typical a development of the 
Irish character. He was acute in Hebrew, Greek, 
and Arabic. In debate he had all the quick Irish wit 
but left to himself he never got out of a question. 
Once discussing Predestination with a learned Ger¬ 
man, Gottschalk, he foiled and confounded his slow¬ 
paced opponent by adroitness and lively repartee, and 
gained the applause of the audience. Inflated by 
success, he wrote a work on “The Nature of Things.” 
He succeeded in classifying all things as follows: 
“That which creates and is not created;” “That 
which is created and creates; ” “ That which is creat¬ 
ed and does not create; ” and lastly, “ That which 
neither creates nor is created.” Surely, nothing would 
be left unclassified! He was called to Rome to an¬ 
swer for his book, but if his writings were weak his 
bodily presence and his speech were effectual. His 
conversation astounded the Pope and Anastasius, his 
librarian, who simply wondered that an island far off 
in the chill fogs of the Atlantic should have produced 
so much of learning and genius. It is true that in 
intellectual attainment Ireland was the peer of Italy. 
Erigena urged that true philosophy is religious: for 
it seeks general and uniform laws. Such laws are 



A Thousand Years Ago. 


expressions of tlie Divine Mind. In traceing them 
there is, then, an approaching to the Divine; and the 
approaching of the human to the Divine is religion. 
For this he deserves remembrance. At our date he 
was in England, zealously laboring under the patron¬ 
age of Alfred, at Winchester. In this century 
Iceland had been found. Thither had gone some 
devotees who thought that, out of the world’s track, 
in an island where nothing poisonous was known, 
piety might thrive unhindered. An Irish monk found 
these recluses well fed from fishing, hunting, and 
some small agriculture; while the long evenings, un¬ 
frittered by society and given to contemplation, 
conduced largely to right-mindedness. Gradually 
these brethren dropped away, and the island stood 
vacant. Then Harold Fairhead, King of the North¬ 
men, undertook new measures—to tax the rude 
possessions of his people, and to require a constant 
military service. One, Harolf, declaring that under 
such tyranny he would not live and no man ought to 
live, gathered the malcontents and led them to the 
freedom of vacant Iceland. Here live their descend¬ 
ants to this day. Their climate was then mild and 
the soil fertile. Their language and literature re¬ 
ward the philologer. Their ships went from this 
TJltama Thule to the coasts of southern seas, and 
brought back spoils of art and war still preserved. In 
four centuries they had passed their meridian; and 


43 



Assays. 


though an intelligent, religious people, it is a wonder 
that they linger in a dreary land and barren, terrible 
for its volcanoes and winters, when so many fairer 
regions invite their occupancy. 

The map of Rome was now modified. As the met¬ 
ropolis of Christendom, famous and sacred, it drew a 
foreign crowd that formed a new quarter in the 
north-easterly space toward the Vatican. This quar¬ 
ter was now annexed and called the Leonine City, 
from Leo IV. It is the heart of Modern Rome, the 
precinct of St. Peter’s, while cows graze in the unused 
Forum; and solitude reigns on the Palatine, the 
dwelling of the Csesars. 

Of education there was little. Lothaire H., now 
Emperor of Germany, like his cousin of France, felt 
the impulse of his grandfather, Charlmagne, who had 
learned reading at thirty and tried writing at sixty. 
Few of his nobles or parish priests could read or 
write; and the learning of the monks shone feebly, 
like the sun in a dim and sour day. He appointed 
nine cities and many towns where teaching was at his 
expense; but his nobles chose idleness or war, and 
his common people had enough to do in paying their 
tribute of grain and cloth and in following their lords 
in arms, without the toil of study. Where ignorance 
was well-nigh universal there was little special motive 
for learning. 

Eastern Europe : At the beginning of the Christian 

44 



A Thousand Years Ago. 


era Augustus was already seeing that Rome had no 
natural fitness for being the capital of a great em¬ 
pire, and, in our own day, its only claim to be the 
capital of United Italy rests on its traditions. Con¬ 
stantine did what Augustus had thought of doing: 
he placed the Metropolis of the World on the Bospor¬ 
us. There, as in its true home, the Empire lived on 
for more than a thousand years after Romulus Au¬ 
gustus had surrendered Rome to Odoacer, King of 
the Heruli. Basil was now Emperor. He claimed 
descent from Alexander the Great: and who was to 
dispute it ? But in his youth he had been a slave. 
Gaining freedom by a bold dash for it, he reached 
Constantinople; and getting employment with a kins¬ 
man of the Emperor Michael, he rose like a Joseph in 
Egypt. Michael was a wretched creature. His noble 
mother had done her utmost for his training, and for 
thirteen years managed the Empire for him wisely 
and frugally. When at the age of eighteen he assum¬ 
ed control she retired to mourn over his ingratitude, 
his vices, and his ruin. He was a second Kero. 
Basil’s life was at the mercy of Michael’s freaks, and 
he at length put Michael out of the way to secure his 
own safety. For this, Basil’s atonement is that he 
found the Empire ruined and left it prosperous. The 
tutor of Basil’s four sons was Photius, a man so extra¬ 
ordinary that it has been proposed to call this the 
Protian Age. Such was his hunger for knowledge 


45 



Essays. 


that he spent whole nights in study; and his memo¬ 
ry never lost or misplaced anything of all that he 
had ever read. He is credited with learning so im¬ 
mense as to include everything which could in that 
age be gained. As historian, philologist, and critic 
he was broad and acute; as a lawyer, his Answers 
give deep and accurate solutions of hardest questions; 
as politician, his Duties of a Prince show marvelous 
sagacity. Still in the prime of life, and being em¬ 
bassador at the court of Bagdad, he was solicited by 
his brother for an account of the books which he 
had read. He at once composed what is called his 
Library. He reckons in this two hundred and eighty 
authors in all branches of human learning. Taking 
each work separately he describes its author, occasion, 
argument, design, and contents; gives careful criti¬ 
cism of its style and character, with meritorious 
extracts and opinions thereon; all in a free, clear 
style, and even yet unsoiled by any reproach of 
quackery. Many classics are known to us only 
through him; and he proves them so valuable that 
we must regret their loss. Men still admire the 
acuteness, the candor, the learning of the man who 
amid the cares of office and diplomacy could achieve 
such work. One thousand later years have produced 
no better brain. 

This Library is the model of our Review —that de¬ 
velopment of literature, by which we through 


46 



A Thousand Years Ago. 

another’s labor become imbued with books which we 
may have no money to buy or no leisure to read: no 
small gift to us from 884. 

One of his pupils, Leo the Philosopher, succeeded 
his father, Basil, on the throne, and became noted 
for conjugal trouble more than for philosophy. In the 
Greek Church a third marriage was accounted forni¬ 
cation ; and a fourth a sin unspeakable. Leo, being 
childless, married a fourth time. Nicholas, the Pat¬ 
riarch boldly excommunicated him and he died 
outside the church, though he exiled Nicholas. 

The Empire had now not a fourth of its size in the 
days of Trajan, but its rulers were the first monarchs 
of Christendom, and their Capital was the richest 
city in the world. Occupying the ground where the 
Turks are now in starving bankrupcy, the tariffs of 
the Metropolis alone yielded $80,000,000 yearly. 
Nicholas’ mother saved for her son to waste 109,000 
pounds of gold and 300,000 pounds of silver. Basil 
laid away in the vaults of his palace 200,000 pounds 
of gold. What has become of all that metal ? 

The heart of the world, the centre of its wealth, 
trade, and learning, was upon the Holy Sea—Agios 
Pelagos, now corrupted into “Archipelago.” The 
city of a million people was splendid with buildings 
of which the grandest, reared by Helena, mother of 
Constantine, to Heavenly Wisdom, is to-day the 
Mosque of St. Sophia. The magnificence of the pal- 


47 



Essays. 


ace, the abode of the Emperors for eleven hundred 
years, was never outdone in ancient or modern times. 
Rome was already in ruins; Paris was still a city of 
mud hovels; London, narrow and beggarly, boasted 
of Seibert’s Abbey, which w r as not the Westminster of 
the Confessor, of Henry EH., and of later kings; but 
here a charming architecture still called Byzantine was 
adorning a city which writers of the time styled the 
Queen and Flower of the earth. 

The Lombard embassador saw by the throne a 
golden tree with leaves and branches sheltering flocks 
of birds, and at its foot two lions of life-size and 
aspect. When he approached the throne at once the 
birds all warbled and the lions roared like their orig¬ 
inals from Mt. Atlas. The embassador and his 
company were made to fall prone and thrice touch 
the floor with their foreheads. Arising, he saw that 
the throne had been hoisted to the ceiling, bearing 
the Emperor now in new and more gorgeous apparel; 
and with this sight of imperial glory he was dismissed 
in silence. Vanity of vanities ! There is in our day 
some bettering of all this. Queen Victoria has no 
such store of gold, but her steam marine would more 
than buy such splendor. It is a century since Dr, 
Franklin, in his silver hair, gave the Queen of France 
a fatherly kiss, as his court-etiquette; and our minis¬ 
ter in London does not touch the floor with his fore¬ 
head. Every man in the Empire, even the humblest 


4:8 



A Thousand Years Ago. 

servant of the Church, was subject in office and estate 
to the imperial will. At this time the PauHcians, 
who renounced images and worshipped God in spirit, 
were tasting the cup of persecution. Some of them, 
driven long after westward, sowed the seed from 
which sprang the Albigenses, that Church in the Wil¬ 
derness, and eventually Luther and the Reformation. 
This city by the sea was a prize which Russians, 
Bulgarians, Persians, and Saracens tried to grasp; but 
its strength of position, the vigor of new dynasties, 
and hirelings paid with its gold resisted them all 
to fall after six hundred years by a more barbarian 
foe. 

In the generation just earlier there had emerged 
from the unknown North some fierce-looking strang¬ 
ers, exploring for adventure’s sake the southward 
streams. The Qreek managed to send them with an 
escort to the son of Charlemagne, then Emperor of 
the West. He identified them with the Northmen, 
at the sight of whose sail on the Mediterranean he 
had seen his father weep with sad foreboding. With 
wild energy these Northern Goths had ravaged the 
West, had planted a kingdom in Sicily, had discovered 
America. Penetrating northeastward to Lake Ladoga, 
they had laid upon the Finns and Slavonians a 
tribute of white squirrel-skins. Their new subjects 
addressed them as Varangians (allies), though they 
called themselves Russians (red men). In 862, Ruric 


49 




Essays. 


appears as their chagan, koenig, king, the first Czar 
of Russia, and his era has been kept as the millen¬ 
nial of the Empire. He inaugurated Russian 
commerce. His wares—beeswax, furs, skins, and 
slaves were exchanged for wine, oil, cloths, and 
spices. The goodly summer-land and the glittering 
wealth tempted the Russians to something more than 
trade. In 865 twelve hundred of their canoes made 
a trial of the city: and in less than four centuries the 
trial was four times repeated. These attacks from 
the dim unknown of the North, though repelled, 
made a deep and lasting alarm. It was believed that 
a cloud-wrapped hand had carved it on a statue in 
the Great Square that the Russians would one day 
possess the city. In the eleventh century the Rus¬ 
sian Czar (Ruric’s line ruled seven hundred years; 
and thirty-two princely houses, some of them in beg- 
gery, claim descent from him) became by marriage a 
claimant of the Greek throne. In 884 the Russians 
were anxious to gain the Queen of the Bosporos. 
They have since gained a twelfth of the earth’s 
surface, but that anxiety is not yet appeased. 

The Hungarians, identical in race with the Lap¬ 
landers (What difference can climate in long ages 
make!),Magyars they call themselves, were now in the 
fertile lands of the Danube. They were no kindred 
of Attila and his Huns. They came from the South 
Ural Mountains; and the Russians gave them from 


50 



A Thousand Years Ago. 


the name of that region the title Hungarian, strange 
to its wearers. In 895 they framed the constitution 
which they still observe, and none in Europe is older. 

The sakacens (Men of the Desert): The flight of 
Mahomet from Mecca to Medina (April 19th. 622), is 
accounted the date of his religion. The progress of 
his successors, the Caliphs, in the three centuries 
following, was marvelous. At our date Bagdad was, 
as indeed for five hundred years, the Capital of their 
Asiatic empire, an empire rivaling that of Xer¬ 
xes. The century had begun with the rule of a 
Caliph worthy to be on the stage with Charlemagne, 
Haroun A1 Raschid, the Just. He was the most en¬ 
ergetic monarch of his race. He called about him 
men of learning and genius; and his agents gathered 
the Greek classics which he caused to be translated 
into Arabic. At Bagdad Ben Mesuach, a Nestorian 
Christian, was what Protius was at Constantinople. 
Were men Moslem, Christian, or Parsee in belief, 
Haroun little cared if only their talents and acquire¬ 
ments made them, in his lofty language, “ luminaries 
that dispel darkness; lords of human mind; of whom 
when the world becomes destitute it sinks again into 
barbarism.” He was fond of justice:— 

* * That monarch wise and witty, 

Whose special taste for putting wrongs to rights 
Brought down upon him blows and sharp invective 
When it pleased him to be his own. detective, 

To scout around his own imperial city 
And scent out scandals of Arabian nights. ” 


51 



Essays. 




He had gone out disguised at night to see what order 
was kept at Bagdad, and, participating in a fray, was 
soundly beaten. He made nine pilgrimages to Mecca 
each with a hundred and twenty thousand camels, 
nine hundred of which were laden with his own 
wardrobe. 

His son, Almamon, better and wiser than his fath¬ 
er, was the best sovereign of his time; and, on the 
whole, the best Moslem sovereign of all times, unless 
Akbar of Delhi was his superior. He was a liberal 
patron of letters, and his agents gathered learned 
works through all lands. Medicine came to such de¬ 
velopment that eight hundred, and sixty practiced it 
at one time in Bagdad, and his physicians were invited 
to the courts of Christian princes. Aristotle was read 
in Arabic, and learned Christians enjoyed the Caliph’s 
favor. He begged the Greek Emperor to permit a 
learned Greek to become a teacher of mathematics and 
astronomy at Bagdad. “And let not,” said he, 
“ diversity of country or religion cause you to refuse 
my request. Do what friendship would demand 
from friends. In return I offer you a hundred 
pounds of gold, perpetual alliance, and peace.” To 
this earnest offer it was rudely answered that the 
sciences that shed lustre on the Koman name should 
not be imparted to barbarians. On this noblest of 
Caliphs we might long linger and study. 

52 



A Thousand Years Ago . 

“Not lie his virtue’s diadem 
Put proudly on to wear; 

Great thoughts, great feelings came to him, 
Like instincts, unaware, 

Blending his soul’s sublimest needs 
With tasks of every day.” 

How quickly did great families degenerate a thousand 
years ago! all but that of Alfred. Is it always so ? 
Charlemagne, Basil, Haroun, mighty men of old, 
were grandsires of weaklings, and then their line van¬ 
ishes. Only Alfred had a grandson such as Athelston. 
Motassem, son of Almamon, hired as soldiers, when 
now Arabian valor was waning, fifty thousand Turks 
from beyond the Caspian, and thus came into history 
that unspeakable race still encamped on the border 
of Europe. At Bagdad they behaved as masters 
rather than as servants. When Motassem died they 
slew his weak and wicked son and put his grandson 
on the throne for six months. The empire of the 
Caliphs began its downward course; Bagdad was 
shorn of its glory and slowly sank into long obscurity. 
Meanwhile at another point on the horizon another 
Moslem power arose to be for its time sovereign of 
the ascendant. 

The fierce general who led the Cresent through 
North Africa, spurred his horse into the wave and 
flashed his sword at Spain. Tarik afterward led his 
troops across the strait to the Jebel-al-Tarik (Gibral¬ 
tar), the eminence which has since borne his name, 


53 



Essays. 


that Pillar of Hercules in earlier days inscribed ne 
plus ultra, nothing more beyond, in the wastes of the 
ocean. From Gibraltar the Saracens conquered for a 
thousand miles to the banks of the Loire. A thousand 
more would have taken them to Scotland and Poland, 
and made Europe Moslem. Here they met Charles, 
grandfather of Charlemagne, and launched their un¬ 
conquered Arab horsemen upon his also unconquered 
iron-handed footmen. For six days the fight was 
desperate; on the seventh the Saracens fled, and 
Charles Martel (the Hammer) had saved Europe. 
At our date they had lost the North of Spain but in 
the South was rising that Moorish kingdom, the 
flower of all Moslem states; which after six hundred 
years Ferdinand and Isabella were able to conquer, 
but which neither they nor their successors to this 
day have equalled. Saracen adventurers in these 
days even plundered Rome. One Caleb, a robber at 
large in the Pyrenees, and searovers from the terrible 
Northmen, obstructed the prosperity of the Kingdom 
of Grenada, as this Moorish kingdom was called, but 
it fared as well as its neighbors, and its golden age 
was dawning. Abdalrahman HI., now ruling, was 
in this Western realm what Almamon had just been 
in the Eastern. During his peaceful reign of fifty 
years his management was just and wise. Medicine 
received great attention; Astronomy was pursued to 
an extent and with an accuracy marvelous for naked 


54 



A Thousand Years Ago. 


eyes; Chemistry still uses names and processes of 
their introducing; the new science of Algebra was 
carefully fostered; Poetry had ample patronage; their 
architecture is still admired and imitated. 

How strangely this sounds in our ears! We think 
of the Mahometans of our own day in their barbarism 
and decay; of the cadi at Bagdad who said: “May 
God curse all infidels and their works. What comes 
from their hands is of Satan ! ” This worthy magis¬ 
trate represents the Islam of our time. 

The Saracens of Spain, called Moors from a people 
of northwest Africa whom they absorbed, were ard¬ 
ent, liberal, and polite. Never before or since did 
that region flourish as under their occupancy. Cor- 
duba had six hundred mosques, nine hundred public 
baths, and two hundred thousand houses. Its library 
contained six hundred thousand volumes. In the 
Kingdom were eighty cities of the first rank and 
three hundred inferior. On the banks of the Guad- 
alquiver were twelve thousand villages and hamlets, 
while the well-tilled soil amply fed its teeming mil¬ 
lions. This sovereign built near Corduba a palace 
for Zehra, his wife, bearing her name, which vied 
with that of Constantinople. It had twelve hundred 
costly pillars, and its hall of audience blazed with 
gold and pearls. His harem contained six thousand 
three hundred persons; his body-guard was twelve 
thousand horsemen, whose belts and scimitar-hilts 


55 




Essays. 




were wrought in gold. In their own annals we must 
allow a margin for Arabian exaggeration, but the sev¬ 
erest critics agree that this was the era of Saracenic 
wealth, culture, and magnificence. These grand and 
gallant Moors certainly surpassed all others of their 
time in arts and arms; and Corduba was in splendor 
the second city in the world. In Western Europe 
not merely was it the only centre of politeness, art, 
and genius, also it was the only home of astronomy, 
mathematics, and medicine. Ample patronage was 
given to every form of polite learning. Says a candid 
historian: “If we compare its authors and their 
works with those of the most active and tranquil of 
modern times, the decision must be in favor of Moor¬ 
ish Spain.” Such were the Moors of Spain a thousand 
years ago. 

Yet, when he who had developed all this prosperity 
and fostered all this splendor was laid upon the 
couch from which he was not to rise, he said: “I 
have now reigned above fifty years in victory and 
peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my ene¬ 
mies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, 
power and pleasure have waited on my call, nor does 
any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to 
my felicity. I have diligently numbered the days of 
pure and genuine happiness that have fallen to my 
lot: they amount to fourteen. O man! place not thy 
confidence in this present world.” What an echo of 

56 



A Thousand Years Ago. 

that Hebrew utterance: “Vanity of vanities; all is 
vanity! ” Those fourteen must, by the fixed laws of 
the human heart, have been days when he did good 
to others with some feeling of effort or sacrifice on 
his own part. No lapse of time, no change of place 
alters that rule for mortals. In the words of Jennie 
Deans: “Not what we do for ourselves, but what we 
do for others makes us happy then.” How has this 
glory of the children of Shem vanished like the en¬ 
chanted palace into gloom and silence! Those then 
rude, struggling sons of Japhet now occupy Europe 
and rule most of the world. These brilliant Moors 
and Saracens have come to be dwellers in unwhole : 
some, dilapidated towns, or half wild rovers of 
deserts. A few relics of their achievements, a few 
gems of architecture, scraps of poetry, and terms of 
science survive, as if floating where a freighted ship 
had foundered: but dead nations never rise again. 
Yet so complete was that civilization which in 884 
was passing from bud to blossom that we may com¬ 
fort its brevity with the quaint words: 

“It is not growing like a tree 
In bulk doth make man better be ; 

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, 

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere. 

A lily of a day 
Is fairer far in May. 

Although it fall and die that night, 

It was the plant and flower of light. 


57 



Essays. 


In small proportions we just beauties see, 

And in small measures life may perfect be. ” 

So scant of abiding results was this Moorish era that 
its splendor seems meteoric, upon regions dark, cold, 
and sluggish, making its transit so rapid before the 
dawn of modern civilization. 

It is needless any farther to rehearse the world as 
it was ten centuries behind us. It concerns us little 
what may have been doing in India or China. But 
if, after thus looking at its outlines, we think of the 
world as our living eyes behold it, how can we avoid 
continual looking first on this picture and then on 
that? 

One has wittily introduced the shade of Cicero 
(Protius would do as well) conversing with an intelli¬ 
gent man of our own day. It is at night. The 
Modern speaks of England, and the Shade recalls 
how he heard his rival, Julius Caesar, speak of such a 
land, though by another name. He is surprised that 
art, learning, power centre in that dim, chilly island. 
As conversation proceeds the Shade grows eloquent 
with amazement. The Modern expects a friend. He 
lights a match and looks at his watch; he fires a pistol 
as a signal of his whereabouts. The Shade, shivering 
in terror, begs explanation of these miracles. “My 
friend is from America.” The master-mind of Rome 
was dumb with perplexity; “I remember that our 
poets placed the Hesperides, the garden of the future, 
far in the golden West. “ Longe trans oceanum (as 

58 



A Thousand Years Ago. 


I once quoted the Sybilline books) shall the bright, 
consummate flower of humanity bloom beyond the 
Atlantic sea. Even in my own day the course of em¬ 
pire tended westward.— What is that monster ? ” 
continued the Shade, peering down into the night 
glare on the bay. “It is a steamship from America: 
another has just left the American shore to follow 
tins one.” “How can you know that ?” “The light¬ 
ning of Jove, now the servant of man, has come and 
told me.” The Shade looked faint and vanished. We 
are two thousand years from Cicero, but all that 
chiefly distinguishes our day from his has come dur¬ 
ing the latter thousand. 

To look forward a thousand years ! Few geological 
changes may occur, as in the same interval past few 
have occurred. Thirty generations of such as we are 
will have hastened across the earth—to disappear 
among the immortals. The star of the tenth magni¬ 
tude will hardly have caught the light from our 
star-spangled banner, but we shall long have been 
familiar with the mysteries of the spirit-world. Hu¬ 
man nature will remain the same: not a passion or a 
pang will be annihilated. 

“Men will look before and after 
And pine for what is not; 

Their sincerest laughter 
With some pain be fraught; 

Their sweetest songs be those 
That tell of saddest thought. ” 


59 



Essays. 


There can be no change of man’s relation to his 
fellow; but will all civil government be republican? 
The human mind will be yet pulsing like the sea. 
Will new Raphaels, Mozarts, Shakespeares, arise? 
Will older continents have become outworn and de¬ 
generate ; and Africa, unwasted and intense, coming 
from the chamber of its long night, outstrip its prede¬ 
cessors and lead the van of humanity? Endless 
questions arise; and who shall answer them ? Of one 
thing we are sure: that this is our year; that our 
own best things are nearest us, lie close about our 
feet. 

“ To us is life a simple art 
Of duties to be done, 

A game where each must take his part, 

A race where all must run; 

A battle whose great scheme and scope 
We may not think to know— 

Content, like men-at-arms, to cope 
Each with his fronting foe. ” 




CHAPTEE m. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNUTTERED. 

^ f T T NTJTTEEED ” is here chosen before the plain 
U word silence , for the latter has too wide a 
meaning. We wish to treat of that omission felt in 
all human utterance whether spoken or written. By 
the philosophy of it is meant some expression of facts 
relating to it, something of its cause, quality, and 
effects. To prove the theme worthy of attention one 
needs but to refer to the universal consciousness. 
Who that may read this ever told all his thought ? 
What tongue so fluent, what pen so nimble as to ex¬ 
press all the workings of one heart or of one brain ? 

Dr. Samuel Johnson is represented as saying that 
he knew of no pleasure so nearly perfect as that of 
riding in a one-horse chaise, conversing with a wo¬ 
man who understood him. The opinion has indeed 
prevailed that this great Dictator in literature was a 


61 


Essays. 


monopolist in conversation, but we must surely know 
that he could not long enjoy the talk unless his com¬ 
panion enjoyed it also. 

Experience in certain departments of instruction 
furnishes illustrations of our theme. The speaking 
and hearing of a foreign tongue quickly shows us 
how little of our own is actually uttered. It is only 
when we are using a somewhat unfamiliar speech 
that we need the whole outspoken; from our vernac¬ 
ular we indulge in droppings large and reckless. 

Going a little out of discourse into a kindred art, 
we find in Painting the doctrine called Eaphaelism. 
It is not very important, but the gist of it seems to 
be this: that in looking at an object, say a human 
face, we see hardly half as much as we think we see. 
We are said to grasp in vision and retain in memory 
only a few prominences of outline and color. All else 
may be changed without our notice, for it never came 
to our notice. Vision is the most alert and unerring 
of our senses; and it is startling to think that in our 
common use, for our daily needs and reliances, what 
it does for us is not so much as what it fails to do. 
We think we know a thing when we see it, but how 
imperfect must our knowledge be when we are half 
blind ! Still, if the unseen supports the seen here is 
no waste, nor can we say the unseen is idly lost from 
view or in anywise vainly made. It is part of a usage 
running far and wide in Nature. The weak must be 


62 



The Philosophy of the ZTnuttered. 


not only obscured by tbe strong but it must merge 
and be sunken in the strong that this latter may have 
its fulness and quality. This is something more than 
the survival of the fittest; it is making the fittest 
still fitter by sacrificing thereto the unfit. 

Turning now from material art (though Ruskin has 
shown us how Turner, a modern master, excelled in 
suppression, in that fortitude of moderation that can 
leave out much), one hesitates to show how in the 
kindred art of music silence gives force and signifi¬ 
cance to sound. The domain of physical nature gives 
our theme one illustration lying near to music, and 
too fitting and beautiful to be disregarded. 

The silence of the stars—since they broke out in 
song on creation’s morning—has always had a fasci¬ 
nation for men’s thoughts. This is not only because 
our poets give them voice, and with Romeo affirm: 

* ‘There’s not the smallest star in all their course 
But in his motion like an angel sings.” 
or with Addison: 

“ In Reason’s ear they all rejoice 
And utter forth a glorious voice. ” 

Nor is it from their movement, that visible panto¬ 
mime of music acted, without which they might, like 
that flower of Gothic architecture, be called music- 
frozen. “There is no speech or language; their voice 
is not heard,” says the Psalmist. To poets they may 
be forever singing as they shine, but to plain people 
they are silent and nothing more. 

63 



Essays. 


But this silence has its very witchery. - Why are 
they so gazing down upon us ? To early lookers and 
thinkers this question became intense and painful. 
Then it found answer in the persuasion that the stars 
were something more than merely lookers-on in hu¬ 
man affairs; that they do something more than serve 
as bright chronometers of days and years; that they 
indicate and even control our destiny. The planets 
ruling at our birth fix and name our temperaments, 
making us dull— saturnine ; lively— mercurial ; cheer¬ 
ful— -jovial. The sweet influences of the Pleiades, the 
virtues af Sirius or Orion, make them lords, for good 
or ill, ascendant over us. This persuasion stoutly 
defies all sneers of science, for the spell is ever rein, 
forced by the air of mystery, the sympathy with our 
mirth or sadness, the tender earnestness with which 
they hang over us as over those whom they love and 
yet must govern. This comes from their silence. 
Were they tuneful or talkative in so excellent a thing 
as a soft, low voice, or in whisper faint as horn of 
elf-land, there w T ould have been no astrology. They 
would have revealed themselves too much: their 
magic would not have filled the night air and wrought 
in the souls of men. 

Let us make inquiry of our subject in a line of our 
daily human concern, the department of Law. The 
law has a wonderful utterance. The first great Eng¬ 
lish lawyer said of the loved study of his honored 


64 




The Philosophy of the Unuttered. 

life: “ Her voice is the harmony of the world.” Then 
by the analogy which we have been tracing, if such 
be her voice, significant indeed must be her silence! 
In law it may -well be said: “All utterance faileth 
there,” so difficult is it well and clearly to state a given 
law. An experienced legislator said, and that not 
lightly, that no Act of Parliament could be framed 
through which a coach and four horses could not be 
driven. To say straightforwardly just what one 
means is supposed to be characteristic of the English, 
using their own language; and we may suppose that 
any given man may to his own satisfaction tell his 
own mind. When his utterance has passed beyond 
his own lip or pen and has become the property of 
others, then the trouble begins. An experience not 
rare, and often amusing, which teachers have with 
the essays of their pupils is, that young writers 
may think they have exactly said their thought 
when that is precisely what they have not said. Here 
is an example lately under a teacher’s eye: “ Many 
actions have been highly regarded among some na¬ 
tions that were less so among others. For instance, 
the antipathy of a Jew to a pig, as compared to other 
nations.” This was from a young mind fairly clear 
and active. Should that mind some day energize in 
law-making, can we hope that it will be its own inter¬ 
preter ? Still worse, should there be a committee of 
such men to draft a law, and their fabric come before 


65 



Essays. 


two legislative Houses and a governor all of kindred 
minds, is it not a grave task that must await that 
sorely tried department, the Judicial, to interpret 
their work and tell them what they meant ? It has 
happened that a man has been unable to read his own 
handwriting after he had forgotten its subject and 
occasion. A legislator might possibly be puzzled in 
the same way with his own law. After the adjourn¬ 
ment of the legislature of 1884, the Governor of New 
York is said to have withheld his signature from some 
bills from inability to supply the omissions which 
would make them consistent or even intelligible. 

One now sees how it happens that a law has been 
likened to a comet’s head, and its interpretation by 
comment and exposition to the comet’s tail—many, 
many times larger, and, by supposition, more lumin¬ 
ous. A jurist carries his code and statutes in his 
traditional green bag, but his shelves must groan 
with the burden of cases and decisions. Why these 
laden shelves, this bulk that creates the cost and 
value of a law library ? This comes of the Law’s 
silence. It takes far less toil and thought to frame 
a law than to explain it after framing, as the charters 
of the city of New York illustrate. When Blackstone 
said: “ Law is the perfection of human reason,” he 
spoke of it as he saw it through his own eyes. This 
perfection that he saw was not in any one law or even 
in the aggregate statements of all laws, as in what 


66 



The Philosopy of the Unuttered. 

they suggested but left unstated. This omitted part 
Blackstone’s reason with giant energy lifted up into 
light. He did as one who should raise an iceberg 
wholly to the surface and cause its huge bulk of blue 
and white to flash and sparkle in the blaze of the 
North Atlantic sunshine. Possibly anticipating what 
may be said farther on, we may observe that like 
chasms of omission occur in the Divine Law. “The 
Law of the Lord was perfect for its purpose,” but be¬ 
tween its Ten Commandments the Jewish expounders 
found it necessary to insert six hundred and three as 
supplementary; and to-day great is the company of 
believing men who by pen and tongue are supplying 
the vacuums in the teachings of the Great Teacher. 

Turn we now to that fair realm where all utterance 
takes on the form and . drapery of the Beautiful. 
Poetry is always a surprise, for it brings to us qual¬ 
ities of things hitherto unnoticed; or it sheds on 
things familiar some novelty of light that never was 
on sea or shore. In this, poets as well as prophets 
have each his own faculty, a sense given to discern 
the undiscerned or the half discerned in man, in na¬ 
ture, and in human life. In his character of prophet 
the poet announces new truths, restores forgotten 
ones, or unveils those hidden from common eyes. In 
his character of simple artist he sets forth in effect - 
tive composition the forms which we at once recog¬ 
nize, or gives charm and expressions to feelings and 


67 



Essays. 


thoughts with which we are ail familiar. No wonder 
that his gift and calling have been valued even among 
barbarians, and the most cultivated of peoples have 
valued them the most highly. But poetry is by the 
primal meaning of the word creative ; and it does its 
work by arousing the creative faculty in those to 
whom it is addressed. It makes them stir in action, 
as the Homeric poems made Greek warriors for a 
thousand years fight those battles o’er again, forever 
routing their foes and forever slaying the slain. Or 
it shapes in the opaque to show us something broad 
and bright beyond. The styles of window may vary 
from very simple, as in Burns, to very stately, as in 
Milton, but the excellence is not in the window; it is 
in what we see beyond it. It is in Shakespeare that 
we are unaware of the presence of any window at all, 
so perfect is the medium through which we gaze 
upon his living men and women, their designs and 
environments, until we ourselves are roused to act 
and feel in our own consciousness like Brutus or 
Macbeth. 

He is, then, most truly a poet who most inspires 
my own creative faculty. In thus giving me impulses 
and suggestions he must leave me something to do 
and room for doing it. He must give thoughts lum¬ 
inous and animating, as gems and models for my 
own; and must awaken in me longings to achieve 
somewhat of like quality; then he must leave me to 
68 



The Philosophy of the Unuttered. 


myself. My own pleasure I find in the warm life of 
thought and feeling that he has breathed into me; 
and while I attribute this to what he has sung to me, 
I find it really due to wdiat he has moved me to sing 
to myself. 

Take a simple case of this from Collins’ Ode to the 
Scottish Patriots , in 1746: 

* * How sleep the brave who sink to rest 
With all their country’s wishes blest! ” 

Here are simplicity, energy, tenderness, a sinking, a 
sleep, a blessing, scenes and actions; yet how little is 
really said! In reading it one is conscious of supply¬ 
ing between the lines more by far than the lines 
give. Yet had the poet himself put in this amount 
his poetry would have become mere verse. He who 
makes us feel that he has left much for us to do that 
is worth the doing, and then so vitalizes and exalts 
us that we feel like taking hold to do it, and do actu¬ 
ally so attempt, is the highest style of poet; the royal, 
glorious master at whose bidding we rise to work 
with ready, joyous energy. Take the choicest things 
of Milton, such phrases as : 

“Stroked the raven wing of darkness till it smiled.” 

and 

“What seemed his head, 

The likeness of a kingly crown had on. ” 

Here almost nothing is told, but how much are we 
started to supply ! When Shakespeare tells of “ The 
far backward and abysm of time,” how we instantly 
69 



Essays. 


go to filling in the shadowy framework of this migh¬ 
ty void ! So they say in the sculptor’s studio a few 
strokes from the master’s chisel mark out for the 
common workman a whole day’s toil. This power to 
omit and thus compel others to supply is really a cri¬ 
terion of poetic power: by it we may grade poets and 
poetry. We may even retain the product of our own 
thinkings after that which has inspired them has es¬ 
caped our recollection. We remember something gave 
us an impulse and then vanished like a dream, but 
what our thoughts and feelings filled into its outline 
remains and keeps the contour of the original mould¬ 
ing. One is reminded of that legend of the Black 
Forest: how upon an island in its lake once stood a 
convent where pious monks at bell-call chanted tune¬ 
ful liturgies. All is gone down beneath the wave; 
still at their hour the bells are heard from the un¬ 
seen depths, and the forest is tuneful with the call to 
prayer. So, as we sit at leisure, we are conscious of 
an inward echoing as of the passing sound of distant 
bells. What bells pealed forth the primal tone and 
fixed the undying echo, is beyond our telling, but 
their music must have been entrancing. 

The Drama, too, the Shakespearian—for no other 
need be named—gives ample and effective illustration 
of our theme. Acting belittles those dramas, so rare¬ 
ly can one who must please an audience come near a 
character of Shakespeare. An Othello or a Hamlet 


70 



The Philosophy of the Unuttered. 


is in our band and we are reading. Let us reverse 
that all the world’s a stage, and say, “ This drama is 
a fragment from a great world astir: even athrob 
with thought, feeling, and movement.” Such a con¬ 
viction will grow upon us. Yet what have we before 
us but words few and brief % Simply that and noth 
ing more. A personage entering seems to say, “I 
am but a voice.” We know that in the world of reality 
upon which the world of actuality rests, a voice has a 
great deal back of it. At even a telephonic distance 
there is at the wire’s end a living man or woman 
having the essentials and some of the incidentals of 
humanity and in some of its environments. A voice 
comes from no shape of viewless air. It comes from 
a human being of a certain stature, temperament, 
and bearing; of affections, appetites, and passions; 
of a condition framed by a free will with fixed fate; 
of an ever-shifting experience of joy and sorrow. And 
now from the speech to reproduce the speaker: for to 
this task we are as by instinct set, and do it in some 
way we must. 

The Comparative Anatomist claims that he can 
from one fossil bone reproduce the entire skeleton, 
can clothe it with flesh, and bring the skin upon it, 
and, restoring its surroundings, set it in true attitude 
to walk or swim or fly. Going farther, he supplies 
the condition of air, earth, water, light and tempera¬ 
ture, companionship animal and vegetable, and all 

71 





that is needed to account for the structure of that 
little bone. So a single dramatic utterance presumes 
and demands how many facts of character and condi¬ 
tion ! Take any one of Shakespeare’s women. 
Ophelia is as a bird afar in the mist of a summer 
morning. We catch some warblings sweet, sad, and 
disorderly; and we, peering, strain our eyes for a 
better view of the singer. A gifted reader of the un¬ 
written, Mrs. Helen Faucit, herself no ordinary actor, 
has called, as by witchery, from this veiling mist, a 
living Ophelia of shape, complexion, and biography; 
and built the outline full of a bright, gentle, loving, 
suffering woman. This combination of outline with 
emptiness gives the Shakesperian dramas their per¬ 
ennial power to fascinate. They are in this like the 
night sky above us, not only that he who sees the 
farthest finds no starless background, but also that 
he finds himself set to an ever larger task in the ad¬ 
justment of relations and the framing of systems. 
But is not this task the astronomer’s joy and dignity? 

The great Dramatist is himself very like one of his 
own personages. A scrap or two of tangible evi¬ 
dence, confirming certain conditions, is all our legal 
proof that there ever lived and wrote a man now con¬ 
fessed the greatest poet in the tide of time; whom 
Milton in the fellowship of lofty souls proudly calls 
“ My Shakespeare! ” 

We see in Othello the clear cut lines of a generous 


72 



The Philosopy of the Unuttered. 


soul, gigantic in courage, love, and agony. We know 
that these lines are not cut upon air, and we cannot 
rest until we supply the whole marble of the statue 
to give them basis and habitation. Still restless and 
intense, we must bring out the sculptor, too; and so 
will it be to the end of time. From the spoken we 
proceed with glowing energy to develop the unspoken 
and our delight is perfect when from these we repro¬ 
duce the speaker. 

A striking phase of the XJnuttered is shown when 
there is given forth but one w r ord, or speech, or song 
which by its quality seems to be but the prelude to 
something more, to something rich and strange. The 
Arab girl found her lover by the words London! 
Gilbert !, for these, all her English stock and store, 
suggested some romance and roused in her hearers 
an eager sympathy. In the end of the last century a 
man of known ability was made a Member of Parlia¬ 
ment. On his first evening of session he rose and 
gave broad thoughts with such clearness, grace, and 
energy that men hailed him as a star on the Parlia¬ 
mentary horizon. Twenty long years thereafter he 
sat in silence vexatious to his friends, fearing lest a 
second effort might fall below that first; and to this 
day he is known as “ Single-speech Hamilton.” Like 
this is the case of Wolfe who, as seems at last con¬ 
ceded, in a thrill of inspiration told with tender 
dignity, as of muftied drums, the burial of Sir John 
73 



Essays. 


Moore. He had written nothing before; he wrote 
somewhat briefly and tamely after. The public saw 
with surprise and disgust the inspiration and the 
poet’s dream—a moment bright, then lost forever. 
Behold that strange poem, The Raven. It utters its 
one word of solemn majesty, and seems so full of 
deep and awful discourse. Yet there it stays, like its 
own central figure on the pallid bust, at first calmly 
mysterious, but at last tantalizing and exasperating 
because none can fill up its fantastic outline. Who 
has not felt the disquiet near to torture which a sin¬ 
gle unsustained word can give when we think that 
behind it may lie what it deeply concerns us to know. 
So around the dying Beaufort stood men in agony of 
waiting if he might speak but one more word—and 
waited in vain. The last word of the dying, that 
which is to have no successor shaped by mortal lips 
from mortal breath, is often beyond interpreting, be¬ 
cause like a point in space it has no outline, has 
position only on the margin of the eternal silences. 

Let us now look into Holy Writ and see the part of 
the Unuttered in the last and highest style of utter¬ 
ance. The Sacred Rhetoric is perfect. We study it 
as we study the stars, not to criticize but to compre¬ 
hend. Begin at the beginning and the Untold comes 
first. The Oratorio opens with felt silence, deep and 
wide which later fell on heaven for the space of half 
an hour. A few words tell all that is told of the six 
74 



The Philosophy of the Vnuttered. 


days’ doings, but what volumes would express the in¬ 
tervals alive with elemental energies and heavy laden 
with results which we are very sure must be there f 

Herein men of science have fonnd their golden 
opportunity, and have used it well. Time and space 
are here for seas that broil and surge; for icebergs 
under pitiless skies, ballasted with rocks, their bases 
grinding and shaping continents; for depressions and 
upheavals; for hardening sunbeams into coal; for 
survivals and developments; for manifold and stu¬ 
pendous changes of which the traces are on every 
hand unmistakable. In these vast spaces men may 
freely roam and expatiate among probabilities, possi¬ 
bilities, and demonstrations. Find they much or 
little it is all their own. The Scriptural brevity is 
not meant to mock and baffle them. It gives them 
outline and final criterion; but the arena, broad and 
glorious, like that of the Coliseun faced with marble 
mountains, it leaves to them without let or hindrance. 

What is true of science in the Scripture is also no¬ 
ticed in its doctrine. One could imagine that every 
doctrine (that is, every fact of the relation of the 
human to the divine on which other facts are hang¬ 
ing) might have been clearly stated in all its breadth 
and limitation. In fact some very weighty doctrines, 
as that of the Trinity, are not stated at all; and 
others, as of free will and foreordination are so frag¬ 
mentary given that to the end of time believers may 
75 



Essays. 


hold views directly opposite. Let one interrogate the 
Book on almost any topic, and the answer omits far 
more than it supplies. Like the Shekinah within the 
Tabernacle, it flames upon the Statutes of Duty, upon 
the Covenant of Love, and not beyond. It leaves 
much in the gloaming, to be brought to view by 
human reason, conscience, and affection. The Great 
Teacher himself said little where He might have said 
much, especially on those matters in which human 
curiosity outruns even the swift flight of human life. 
He could have told the broad future of the w r orld, 
and, as Prophet of the Infinite, He might have hung 
in the air, as by a mirage, the events lying below our 
mortal horizon. But as He left some mighty deeds 
undone, so He left some truths untold, and they must 
remain untold. It may be that they are inexpressible 
by human language. Lazarus came back silent over 
the eternal portal. Paul found the things of Paradise 
impossible for fleshly tongue to rehearse. 

Thus far, and perhaps too far, runs our investiga¬ 
tion. 

Of what use is this Unuttered ? One use of it is 
that it gives dignity and support to that which is 
uttered. The waters in the great ocean-depths are 
neither seen nor heard, but they lift the waves of the 
surface and give them momentum and majesty. The 
billows of the Mid-Ocean are something mightier 
than the breakers that chafe and fret upon the shoals 
76 



The Philosophy of'the Unuttered. 


along the shore. So the sayings of men get weight 
and movement from the breadth and depth of that 
which they forbear to say. Berryer, the greatest 
French lawyer of our century, gave from long practice 
in oral testimony the following: “A man has always 
the voice of his mind.” No art of elocution can give 
to the shallow the resonance of the profound. The 
roar of the black lion of Mount Atlas has been heard 
sixty miles across the Algerian plain, echoing from 
clouds and mountains, though near at hand a bray¬ 
ing ass might be more deafening. 

“A fool telleth all his mind,” and small account we 
make of it; but how we listen to one of whom it is 
our conviction that “many such things are with him.” 
Every battle is decided by the reserves, and our esti¬ 
mate of a man’s word is determined by our impression 
of the unseen substructions on which it rests. We 
may hate the speaker and dislike the speech, but 
despise it we cannot if we feel it to be underpinned 
with concealed learning, thought, and sense—broad 
and deep solidities, such as the coral insect builds 
beneath the waves. The poem, oration, sermon, or 
argument that has beneath it wide study and hard 
thinking, is one which, though its words be few, does 
not pass and leave no trace like smoke in air or foam 
on water. The rattle of the shallow orator, like “the 
loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind,” goes off un¬ 
heeded on the wind but came from the depths, goes 
77 



JZssays. 


to the depths, and the unspoken is felt in the home 
of the unspoken. If poets learn in suffering what 
they teach in song, their song tells upon the suffer¬ 
ing of others with a power far beyond its words. It 
is as when a ten-word telegram fills a house with 
voluminous joy or sorrow. 

This relation of the Unuttered secures fair play in 
utterance. One man cannot do it all. What was said 
of conversation is just as true though not as palpable 
in other provinces of expression. “ The Republic of 
Letters ” is an accepted phrase; and implies that he 
who has something to say has an inalienable right to 
say it. Some Autocrat may get hold of the Break¬ 
fast Table, but no man can monopolize the day. None 
of us need go through life without making fair and 
reasonable utterance for himself. This view is com¬ 
mended to young people who are giving time and 
toil to study and training that they may gain some¬ 
thing to say and some power to say it. There are, indeed, 
now in the world many speakers and writers as poets 
editors, advocates, politicians, and clergymen, but 
they do not quite fill the world, nor can they crowd 
you from your place when your hour comes for a 
hearing. Man or woman, if you really have a 
“burden,” to use a prophetic term, you will have 
your chance to deliver it. Up from the silence, like 
a new island from the sea-deeps, will emerge your 
saying. If it be of ooze it will vanish like the trans- 
78 



The Philosophy of the Unuttered. 

ient mud-islands of the Missouri; if it be of solid 
base it will stay and be noted in the charts. If you can 
give it honest soil for growing supplies for daily needs, 
it will be useful; if you can bring upon it a tropical 
verdure with flowers and palms, it will be beautiful, and 
so much will be added to the earth. Better, however, 
were it to remain in the silences than to be a half 
hidden woe to the unheeding mariner, or a seat for 
Sirens singing charms for his ruin. 

In the stowage and disposal of the world there is 
room for you and your voice. Take this early into 
your life-plan, that you will, as in duty bound, say 
your say; and, therefore, get ready to say it well and 
worthily. Lose no time in preparing that which is to 
remain unsaid, which, as we see, is to give tone, qual 
ity, direction, and power to that which is actually 
to be said. If Webster (the story is either true or 
well invented) at the close of his noblest effort was 
asked how long he had been preparing that speech, 
and answered, Forty years; why may not you at once 
draw long range upon some occasion in the horizon 
forty years away ? It ennobles simple school studies— 
Grammar, Rhetoric, Reckoning, and Philosophy to 
train them on such a target. 

The Unuttered is a severe disciplinarian of human 
wit and judgment. Words have a double office: they 
reveal and they conceal. Their simple, undiplomatic, 
use is to reveal; and happy is he who can bring them 
79 



HJssays. 


to their highest revealing power! We sometimes 
listen when every period is telling us so much more 
than strikes the ear; we sometimes read where 
between the lines is so much more than meets the 
eye. We are alert to gather when fruit rattles down 
upon us from beyond the hand that is formally pluck¬ 
ing for us from the bough. This seems in some 
peculiar sense our own. To him who speaks thus 
suggestively the common people and all people listen 
gladly. How gain that suggestive style f Describe 
a hat, and then see how many words you can prune 
from youi* description and still present the hat. “All 
superfluous growths we lop away that bearing boughs 
may live.” So much for a beginning. 

This repression is a grave task for the Unuttered 
when steady energy tends toward utterance. In his 
Salem White plea, Webster discoursed of the restless 
urgency of the unknown to become known, of the se¬ 
cret to become manifest. A Greater had given 
warning of a solemn natural law by which that 
spoken in the ear in closets comes to be shouted from 
the housetop. The struggle for and against repression 
is waged along a margin like the old Border Wars. 
Endless devices are used to keep back the unsaid 
from crossing. Artful weaving of speech; phrases 
non-committal, ambigious, or unmeaning; plain and 
fancy falsehood which politicians (not statesmen) so 
often study and diplomatists so often master. “ Bless 
80 



The Philosophy of the Unuttered. 

me! how the world is given to lying! ” quoth the ver¬ 
acious Falstaff. Whatever be the place of the he in 
morals or its rank in art, we find it, as related to our 
theme, a failure. It is too slack of twist, too loose of 
texture to confine the unspoken. This will come 
through it as bubbles through the water, or exhala¬ 
tions through the ground. It will not be so repressed; 
at its hour it will stir in its depths and make its way 
to the light of the sun. 

It is a notable achievement of our human intellect, 
possibly our highest and noblest—this discerning of 
the Unuttered. We reverence our law-makers. If 
we did not think them wiser than ourselves we should 
not select them for their work. But men of the 
highest style of intellect we put on the judicial bench 
to tell us what the law-maker would have said and 
did not say; to unfold logically what is in the shadow 
behind the statue. 

Among their four adjectives in ax, held needful to 
describe a general, the Homans put emphasis on 
sagax. This, from saga , meant having ability to see 
beyond other men into the enemy’s plans and move¬ 
ments, his condition, and the meaning of his appear¬ 
ances. No leader ever became great without this 
ability. Without it Cromwell would not have had his 
Dunbar, or Napoleon his Austerlitz.. It is a marvell¬ 
ous power, outrunning the sweep of the eagle’s eye; 
and peace has use for it no less than war. 

81 



Essays. 


When young Daniel, prophet of the Unuttered, re¬ 
called that far-flown dream and told its meaning to 
the king, some power given, not acquired, some over 
mastery of inspiration, not of genius, was stirring 
within him; but toward such exploits as his, genius 
is always yearning and striving; to tell the untold, to 
sing the unsung, to do in some way the undone, to 
give tenantry to the vacant and voice to the silent. 

Thus far has run our discourse of the Unuttered. 
And for what use ? We have wished to inquire about 
the mighty sum of things not speaking but abiding, 
like Virgil’s throngs of unborn souls—just below the 
horizon of the actual. We find that these so press 
upon that line of misty light as to give shape, 
strength, and color to all that rises above it. We need 
not wonder that consciousness of the Unuttered, by 
which men come to be never less alone than when 
alone, has even charmed them away from society and 
from pleasant human voices to deep solitudes and to 
ever-musing contemplation. This was an extrava¬ 
gance, as if at the golden working time of noon they 
would remove the sun to gain the star-crowded night. 

We have seen how the unspoken gives volume and 
quality to the unspoken. The Nile, fertilizing the 
most fertile of lands, seemed to men to bring life and 
verdure from the invisible. The river explained to 
them the regions that fed it, and told of soils and 
rain-falls beyond the range of visitation. Of that 
82 



The Philosophy of the Unuttered. 


Dark Continent, whatever it might be, must Egypt 
be formed and fattened. And as old Africa to Egypt, 
so is the Unuttered to the Uttered. 

Happy is he to whom this far-lying, mysterious 
region is so broad, so copious, so clean that his flit¬ 
ting dreams or slow-paced waking thoughts, his 
ejaculations, or his long-drawn discourses bring 
therefrom light, strength, and sweetness; who is 
thus blest in his solitude, and is himself a blessing 
in society. 





CHAPTER IV. 


GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 

T HE land of Sweden has few physical attractions. 

To the Romans its one noted feature was the 
mysterious play of its nightly Aurora. Its 170,000 
square miles of bleak surface, with crags and pine 
forests, lakes and torrents, snowy wastes along the 
Arctic Circle, and plains at the South not warm 
enough to ripen Indian corn, gave four times, the 
area of Pennsylvania for the same population, or nine- 
tenths of the area of France before the Germanic 
war, with one-tenth of its population. Its northern 
people are few and feeble remnants of those Celts 
whom stronger incomers pushed to the margins of 
Europe, to Biscay, Wales, North Scotland, and Ire¬ 
land. Its southern people are of the Goths, the 
noblest of the Germanic tribes; and, as heirloom and 
memorial of their nationality, the surviving fragment 
84 


Gustavus Adolphus. 

of Ulfila s Gothic Bible, bound in massive silver, is 
shown at the University at Upsala. Three and a half 
millions on a stubborn soil, wasted by northern win¬ 
ters, and placed aside from the heart of the world, 
cannot well have a dominant influence on national 
affairs. 

It has, however, occurred that such a people, hav¬ 
ing on them the inspiration of a great sentiment, and 
ranging themselves for the maintenance of a great 
principle, under a master equal to the occasion, have 
for their hour been arbiters of nations and shaped 
the events of the world. Their exploits in a great 
crisis have made their place in history secure, what¬ 
ever may have been the failures and reverses of 
following times. 

The seventeenth century was the heroic age of 
Sweden, as it was of Holland; and, one may almost 
say, of England. 

Margaret of Denmark, who for the grandeur of her 
schemes and her ability in their execution, has been 
called the Semiramis of the North, who is the peer of 
Isabella and Elizabeth, became in 1397 Queen, or 
Empress of Scandinavia. Denmark, Norway, and 
Sweden formed under her, by the league of Colmar, 
a united Empire. Her successors managed badly. 
In 1433 a patriot Swede, Engelbrekstein, drove out 
the Danes and placed the Sture family on the Swed¬ 
ish throne. In time the Danes conquered the last 
85 



Essays. 


Sture, and recovered the lost sovereignty. The wan¬ 
ton massacre of ninety-eight senators, prelates, and 
nobles at Stockholm (Oct. 8 1520) roused the nation 
to madness. Gustavas Vasa, whose father had per¬ 
ished in the massacre, became the national hero; and 
after adventures romantic and marvellous drove out 
the Danes, and Sweden was free. Vasa was placed 
on the throne; and there his family sat for two hun¬ 
dred years. It was a notable family. 

There runs in the blood of some families (as of the 
Plantagenets in England) a peculiar ingredient of 
power; so that while some of the line may be wild 
none of them are weaklings. When in such a family 
there arises one who has an intellectual balance and a 
moral dignity, then in him the hereditary mightiness 
works the highest pattern and assurance of a kin g. 
In the Vasa line the founder and Adolphus were such 
characters. Erick was a gloomy tyrant; Christina an 
enthusiast, if not insane. Charles XII., in whom the 
line ended, was a madman. But all were mighty; 
and of Sweden it might be said: “In those days were 
giants in the land.” 

Gustavus Adolphus came to the throne on the 
death of his father, Charles IX., in 1611. He was then 
in the fulness of early manhood. His stature of six 
and a half feet was like that of Xerxes or of Paul, 
majestic and impressive; his magnificent form was 
developed by manly and generous exercises. His 
86 



Gustavus Adolphus. 


brown hair was heavy and free; his complexion was 
fair; his eyes large and blue. His deep, rich voice 
enabled him, like Alfred, to give orders in the storm 
of battle, or to lead the sacred song in court or camp. 
Indeed, in matter of personal endowments, Nature on 
him “ did set her seal to give the world assurance of 
a man.” 

His training had been peculiar. At twelve he was 
already active in the study of the art of war, and was 
serving in a campaign under Do La Gardie who was 
reputed the most thorough general of his time. At 
fourteen Gustavus was entrusted with important 
commands. He had become familiar with the princi¬ 
pal languages of Europe, several of which he could 
speak or read with ease and accuracy. His study of 
the Ancient Classics had aroused in him a lofty, an 
almost visionary opinion of life and of human nature; 
and this high estimate of the possibilities of our kind 
never forsook him. 

For instance, he asked why his age did not produce 
generals like Alexander, Csesar, and Hannibal. Being- 
told that the difference lay in the weapons and in 
style and strength of fortifications, he replied with 
youthful ardor that he believed the cause to be some 
slumber fallen on the hearts of men; that, if we could 
meet again the ardor of Alexander, the fortitude of 
Hannibal, and the enterprise of Csesar, we should see 
the deeds of those great men renewed. Such concep- 
87 





Essays. 

tions were the habit of his mind; and spoken out to 
others they caused, as a cotemporary—an enemy— 
says, that “eloquence to make men good dwelt upon 
his tongue.” When at the age of eighteen he ascend¬ 
ed the throne, he was already to a singular degree a 
learned and thoughtful man. 

His religious character is still more interesting. 
Sweden had been the last country of North Europe 
to change from Paganism to Christianity, but she 
had promptly changed from Romanism to Lutheran¬ 
ism. In 1522 a disciple of Luther first preached in 
Sweden. Six years later the King and people in 
solemn assembly adopted the Augsburg Confession 
of Faith. To day the Lutheran is the State Church, 
hedged and confined by laws always intolerant, and 
specially inconvenient now that other forms of faith 
and order are entering and gaining foothold in the 
land. These laws, and the exclusiveness of temper 
by which they were instigated, and which they per¬ 
petuate, must vanish in the warmer, wider breath of 
progressive Christianity. 

The King, early converted, had a deep, discriminat¬ 
ing comprehension of religion, both as an experience 
and as a rule of behavior. Fearless and fervent, he 
often led in person the devotions of his court, singing 
that hymn of his own composing, Verzage nicht , Du 
Hauflein Klein / (Be fearful not, Ye little Flock !) 
and lifting his voice in prayer until hardy warriors 
88 



Gustavus Adolphus. 


were melted as by a Divine Presence. He offered 
public prayer at the undertaking of great enterprises 
and at their conclusion; at the dawn of battle-days 
and when their sun went down. Nor did any—even 
his enemies—ever charge him with hypocrisy or fan¬ 
aticism. Says one who knew him: “In his piety he 
was a king; in his kingly office he was a Christian.’ 

On his accession to the throne he chose for his 
Chancellor and Prime Minister, his youngest courtier, 
Oxenstiern, not for his youth but for his wisdom; a 
choice most fortunate for himself and for his daugh¬ 
ter, Christina, after him. He at once set himself to 
the internal improvement of Sweden. With nations, 
as with individuals, development is a simple art, be¬ 
ginning with two plain questions: “What are one’s 
strong points ? ” and “ How t can these be made strong¬ 
er ? ” Henry IV. of France and Cavour in Italy are 
good instances of effective answering hereto; and 
good answering is good statesmanship. Gustavus 
found the strong points of Sweden to be her mines 
and her shipping. By wise and fostering care he in 
ten years produced those streams of ample revenue 
by which in after troubles Sweden was still affluent; 
and by which he and his nation were able to appear 
upon the stage of Europe like forces entering from 
the cloudy North, as from another world, to rescue in 
a dreadful emergency the welfare of Christendom. 

Let us turn to the regions in which lay such pari 

89 



Essays. 


of this king’s career as was most effective and histor¬ 
ical. Two hundred and fifty years ago Austria was 
the state dominant in the Germanic Empire, and 
then, as now, the champion of Romanism, uncompro¬ 
mising and unappeasable. Prussia was not yet a 
kingdom; it was but one of many small states, mostly 
Protestant, which filled the north of Germany. In 
the seventy-five years since the beginning of Luther’s 
movement a division had sprung up among his follow¬ 
ers. The Lutherans and the Reformed were nearly 
equal in numbers, and were almost as hostile to each 
other as to their common enemy, the Catholics. 
Belying on this dissension of the Protestants, and 
expecting the co-operation of France and Italy, the 
German Catholics opened that dreadful struggle 
known as the Thirty Years War. 

The date of this war after the Keformation is the 
same as the date of our Rebellion after the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence; and in each conflict great 
principles and institutions of freedom were put to 
a terrific ordeal. It was even thought at one time 
that our war of the Rebellion would rage as long as 
this—to the woe and wasting of an entire generation. 

Men who could remember seeing the Reformation 
in its cradle came near to following its hearse, as our 
Daniel Waldo had seen the days of 1776 and was 
seeing the days of 1861. Great as had been some 
struggles of the Reformation in Luther’s life-time, 
*90 



Gustavus Adolphus. 

its most bitter and murderous trial was at the close 
of his century. 

Of this long-drawn, cruel war we shall attempt 
hardly an outline. Even wars for great principles 
get their real character from the men who wage 
them; and so it w T as with this war. The Protestant 
League, after outrageous invasions and indignities, 
found a leader of military gifts and heroic soul in 
Count Ernest of Mansfeld. But Ferdinand, able and 
energetic, fond of war, and implacable in his hate of 
Protestantism, had ascended the Germanic imperial 
throne. In the battle of Weissenburg, 1620, the 
King of Bohemia (son-in-law of James I. of England, 
by whose patronage the first English newspaper was 
now printed to give the events of the war) was de¬ 
feated, and every horror of defeat fell on his hapless 
Kingdom. Thirty thousand families were exiled; the 
the word Bohemian took in France the meaning of a 
homeless wretch; and by fire and sword the faith by 
which Anne had lived and Huss had died, was ex¬ 
terminated from the land to this day. 

Thus at the close of the second year of the war the 
Protestant cause was apparently in swift-fallen ruin. 
But Count Ernest roused up congenial spirits, and 
renewing the war even drove the Catholics into 
France and aided Holland. 

Now rise to view the great imperial leaders. Count 
Tilly was a man of iron. He was clear in thought, 
91 



Essays. 


firm of purpose, and incorruptible in morals. His 
unerring vision swept the field like the glance of an 
eagle. Already past sixty years, his dry, thin frame 
was muscular and defiant of weariness. He boasted 
(and it might well be true) that he had never known 
the feeling of affection for any human being. In bat¬ 
tle he was never defeated until matched against 
Gustavus. 

Albert Wallenstein, who stands far in front of the 
Emperor’s generals, was the truly dramatic character 
of his time. By dramatic we mean one whose lights 
and shades, like those of Melrose Abbey by moon¬ 
light, are so blent and so contrasted as to cast a spell 
upon the imagination, and to hold the thought, as 
fascinated, within a magic circle. 

He was born to command. His keen eye read 
from any multitude of recruits the men for the 
places; and his subalterns were so well assigned as 
never to be uneasy in their positions. Among his 
men his manner was steady, earnest, and reserved. 
His words of praise, seldom spoken and always brief, 
stimulated to the utmost the energies of his men, 
who counted such words ample reward for any toil, 
and even worth recording as a legacy to their child¬ 
ren. His lofty, proud, and martial figure; his rich 
black hair, cut close above his dome like brow; his 
deep, piercing eye expressed thoughtfulness, gravity, 
and mysterious power. Hecla, in the drama, says 
92 



Gustav us Adolphus. 

of him what all felt; and says it proudly, as his 
daughter: 

“This kingly Wallenstein, whene’er he falls, 

Will drag a world to ruin down with him ; 

And, as a ship that in the midst of ocean 
Takes lire and shivering springs into mid-air 
Scattering ’twixt sea and sky the crew she bore, 

So, if some day distruction be his doom, 

Will he sweep all whose fate with his is joined.” 

This man’s soul forever wandered in the bewilder¬ 
ments of astrology. He had learned it from a friend 
of the great Kepler; and he saw in his stars a sure 
revelation of glorious destiny. Ambition over-master¬ 
ed him, and the whole energy of his soul was bent 
on realizing that which floated before him as if paint¬ 
ed on thin air. Strange persuasion ! Not an hour 
after he had said that his star was at last coming- 
near its zenith, and the Austrian throne, the goal of 
his aspiring, was now full in view T —within one short 
hour he lay in weltering death by an assassin’s blade! 

His services to the Empire in Hungary had been 
rewarded by the Dukedom of Friedland, and with 
enormous wealth—far beyond that of any uncrowned 
head in Europe—which he lavished upon troops of 
his own. As he enters upon the scene in Germany, 
Count Ernest, defeated, dies of disease at forty-six 
years. The Duke of Brunswick dies at twenty-five. 
A dismal year for the Protestants! They had no 
more such men to lose; and the three years following 
93 





Essays. 

saw them in constant defeat and flight before Wallen¬ 
stein and Tilly. In 1629 they were prostrate; and 
the Catholics were intoxicated with complete victory. 
The misery of North Germany was intense, and be¬ 
sides boundless murder and pillaging the Catholics 
demanded the absolute surrender of the country into 
their hands. Wallenstein now retiring to his Duchy, 
Tilly alone commanded the Imperialists. He went 
upon the Baltic, and threatened Sweden ! 

At its last sinking a strong hand is thrust out of 
the North t,o lift the Protestant cause. In their dis¬ 
tress the remnant call upon Gustavus. 

We need not now suppose that the King’s desire to 
save his co-religionists was his only motive for enter¬ 
ing Germany. He was not ambitious, as we usually 
take that w T ord, but he felt the power within himself 
and knowing the virtue of his people, was willing to 
lead them to a peerage with other nations. He w T ho 
feels that he can do a great and noble deed has usu¬ 
ally a generous longing to do it, as well for its own 
sake as for other reasons. Besides, the Emperor had 
treated with indignity the King’s embassadors, and 
the choice lay between Sweden and Germany as the 
field of war. Gustavus chose the latter. The Empe¬ 
ror ridiculed his declaration of war and called him a 
snow-king who would soon melt and vanish away. 
Not a snow-king did Gustavus prove to be ! He could 
safely spare from Sweden but 15,000 men; and, in- 
94 



Gustavus Adolphus. 

deed, he could provide funds and shipping for no 
larger number. 

He arranged the affairs of his Kingdom as would a 
dying man, seeking to place every department in 
wise and faithful hands. At length, on May 20, 16C0, 
he assembled the Estates of Sweden, the Nobles, the 
Clergy, the Burghers, and the peasants, to take his 
final leave. He had them make oath of fidelity to 
his daughter, Christina, then four years of age, as his 
successor. 

“Not thoughtlessly,” said he solmnly, “do I plunge 
myself and you into this new r and dangerous war. 
The dread Almighty is my witness that I enter it not 
from caprice or ambition. The Emperor has most 
grossly insulted me in my embassadors, has sustained 
my enemies, has persecuted my brethren, is treading 
my religion in the dust, and is reaching to seize my 
crown. The crushed and suffering Germans cry to 
to me for help; and with God’s favor I will give it. I 
see the dangers which threaten my own life, but from 
dangers I have never shrunk. God has thus far pre¬ 
served me wonderfully, but I shall not always escape, 
and my life will some day be an offering to the land 
of my fathers. I commit you to Heaven’s care. Be 
just; keep good conscience; act above reproach; and 
we shall meet in eternity. To you all a tender fare¬ 
well, perhaps—forever ! ” Manly tears blinded many 
eyes. 


95 



Essays. 




Making the wise and honest Oxenstiern Regent-chan¬ 
cellor, he sailed for the German coast. His fifteen 
thousand were men tried and true. Like Cromwell’s 
thousand Ironsides, they were to be the heroes of the 
war. Around them were to be gathered the scattered, 
despairing Germans. Arrived at Stralsund, the King 
was the first to land; and when his army was upon 
the shore he knelt on the sand, and, with bared head, 
fervently thanked God for the safe passage, and in 
solemn worship sought His gracious guidance. 

Familiar with military history and science, he now 
surpassed all generals in the control of his own men 
Every morning each regiment held worship in the 
open air, around its own chaplain. Gustavus, whose 
lofty form was always then visible, joined in the pray¬ 
ers and Psalms with the fervor of a Christian and the 
grandeur of a King. Not a man in those ranks but 
felt that he was in his leader’s heart as well as in his 
host, almost as each star is in the eye of its Maker: 
hence came that perfect, star-like discipline which 
cotemporary writers account so marvellous. Duelling, 
profanity, theft and robbery, gambling, and intem¬ 
perance were capital crimes. In prohibition of the 
duel Gustavus was in advance of his time. Having 
unwittingly grieved an officer, he went with him a 
considerable distance, to the frontier of Denmark. 
Crossing it he said tenderly: “I know that I insulted 
you. I did not intend it; I regret it. In Sweden 
96 



Gustav us Adolphus. 


you had no redress. We are equal here, and the law 
allows the duel: I am at your service.” Touched bv 
such generous courage the officer fell at the King’s 
feet, and begged only to be allowed to die in his ser¬ 
vice. Showing himself thus equal to the duel he 
could afford to despise and prohibit it Hearing of a 
challenge between two officers, he called them before 
him; and, in the presence of all his court, they found 
a gallows raised. He ordered them to fight if they 
would, saying that he should at once hang the sur¬ 
vivor. They looked upon each other and upon the 
firm, almost tearful face of the King; then fell at his 
feet and implored his pardon. He forgave them; 
they embraced tenderly; and Gustavus, relieved and 
victorious, raised a song of thanks to God in which 
all joined heartily. 

The German citizens, who had endured every 
wrong from the lawlessness of troops, and of whom 
in one city six hundred committed suicide in despair 
at the barbarities of Wallenstein’s men, hailed the 
orderly Swedes as delivering angels—terrible to their 
foes in fight, tender to the vanquished, and gentle to 
their friends. In all this the King was himself the 
pattern. He was daily accessible to his meanest 
soldier; he was abstinent in diet, having in his tent 
neither gold or silver, shrinking from no exposure, 
watching with care the behavior of all, and bearing 
the faculties of command and the asperities of war 
97 



Essays. 

with a pious simplicity and sweetness that attracted 
even little children. 

On landing he found the chief Protestants worse 
than weak: they were debased and disheartened. 
Some had grown timid by frequent defeat; others at 
first honest had given way under the long strain of 
reverses, and had become reckless if not traitorous. 
Their true-hearted leader revived, cemented,' and re¬ 
formed them slowly. 

From Stralsund he marched southward, defeating 
his enemies in a few minor engagements, and driving 
their armies before him. The Emperor, retiring, 
wasted the country; and at last, resolved to do his 
work more thoroughly and leave no enemy in his 
rear, sought to extirpate all Protestants in the South. 

Magdeburg was the chief Protestant city, and this 
Tilly invested with all his forces. Gustavus hastened 
to its relief. His road was among fortresses which 
had to be taken by assault, and when he had nearly 
made the difficult march a sudden rising of the Elbe 
caused a final and fatal delay. The ill-doomed city 
fell after a superhuman struggle. For twelve hours 
Tilly gave his demoniac soldiers full liberty of car¬ 
nage. In those hours were slain twenty thousand 
men, women, and children; and of the city only the 
cathedral, one convent, and a few remote fisher huts 
remained. Two days later, on opening the cathedral 
door, a thousand wretches dead and dying were 
98 



Gustavus Adolphus. 


found. The few that lived of this number were the 
only survivors of a. scene which has no parellel in 
modern warfare. 

From this day Tilly’s good fortune forsook him, 
and his name must bear the execrations of mankind. 
This dreadful event marks the midnight of Protest¬ 
antism. The dial hand, if moving at all, must move 
towards the morning. From the ashes of Magde¬ 
burg arose Protestant warfare and German freedom. 

Tilly now led his army into Saxony, and his track 
was one wide horror of pillage, flame, and murder. 
At last, near Leipsic, Gustavus met him. The decis¬ 
ive day had come. To the septuagenarian who had 
never known defeat, victory would complete such a 
career as is rarely given to man. To the King de¬ 
feat would be the death of his undertaking, and the 
mortal crushing of the Protestant Church in Ger¬ 
many. He was at just half of Tilly’s age, and like 
Tilly had never been defeated. Not since Martel’s 
battle with the Saracens on the plain of Tours, had 
western Europe seen such a day; never since that 
day has so much depended on the issue of a battle. 
Tilly had thirty-five thousand men; among them 
was Pappenheim, the best cavalrist of his day, with a 
heavy cavalry that had swept many a field. Gustavus 
had ten thousand Swedes and twenty-five thousand 
Germans. The latter, often driven, Pappenheim’s 
cavalry scattered like autumn-leaves, but the Swedes 
99 



were a living rock. And, when at last they charged, 
everything fell or fled before them. Seven thousand 
Imperialists lay dead. Of Pappenheim’s cavalry only 
a little company rode away with their leader, who 
had killed fourteen Swedes with his own hand. Tilly 
barely escaped with his life. In the moment of vic¬ 
tory the king, who had been in every exposure, knelt 
among the dead and dying, and poured out his soul 
in a glowing prayer of gladness to which many whit¬ 
ening lips gave feeble but fervent Amen. 

This victory of Leipsic was wonderful. The skill 
of its manoeuvres and the concentrated energy of 
its advance caused Napoleon to reckon that after all 
there w r ere but two generals of the first class—Gusta- 
vus and himself. It certainly placed the King at the 
head of the military men of his day. It awoke atten¬ 
tion and created a new sentiment. It swept from the 
Emperor all that twelve years of struggle had gained. 

Gustavus felt anxious as the Germans loaded him 
with congratulations. They thought the w r ar now 
ended; he saw it but begun, Tilly having received 
his death wound at Augsburg, Wallenstein was called 
from his retirement as the only man who could con¬ 
front the Swede. The army of the latter now swelled 
to a host over which he could scarcely maintain disci¬ 
pline. “ They made him so miserable,” he said, “ that 
he was weary with having to do with a set so per¬ 
verse.” A sad misgiving came over him even while 
100 



Gustavus Adolphus. 

the people were yet kissing his feet as their deliverer. 
“ I fear that God will visit me for the folly of this 
people. How easily could He who abases the proud 
make them and me feel that I am nothing but a weak, 
a mortal man ! ” 

Again, at length, the armies met on the meadows of 
Lutzen. Pappenheim was there with a fresh cavalry. 
Wallenstein’s eagle eye scanned the field and chose 
positions for the fight. The King spent the cold night 
(Nov. 15.) in his carriage, conversing with his officers. 
His army welcomed the foggy morn with prayers and 
hymns, accompanied by drums and trumpets. At 
eleven the sun broke out, and, after a brief prayer, 
the King, mounting his horse, shouted, “Now, on¬ 
ward ! Our God direct us! Lord ! Lord ! Help me to 
fight this day for the honor of thy name! ” and led to 
the attack. Pappenheim’s cavalry broke the Swedish 
infantry. The King went at full speed to the spot; 

and as he dashed forward on his stately charger, 
groups of his men making way for him showed the 
enemy that the rider must be of commanding rank. 
Galloping in advance to ascertain the weaker places 
of his foe, his nearsightedness brought him into dan¬ 
ger. “Who is that? ” shouted one of Pappenheim’s 
men. “It must be a distinguished man ! ” “Shoot 
him!” cried an officer; and a ball shattered the 
King’s left arm. At this instant his troops came up 
with him and cried, “ The King is shot! ” Gustavus 
101 



Essays. 


shouted, “ It is nothing ! ” but another shot pierced 
his back and he fell from his horse. “I have enough,” 
said he to the Duke of Lauenburg at his side, “ save 
thyself ! ” Lauenburg turned and fled, while the 
King expired under the hoofs of Pappenheim’s 
Croats. 

The tidings of his death changed the Swedes to 
grim lions. Life had for them no value now that the 
holiest life was trodden out, and death was welcome 
to the lowly. Revived by wrath and hot revenge 
they gained the day. Pappenheim was slain, Wallen¬ 
stein driven from the field, and victory remained with 
Protestantism. 

How easily may a battle turn at its crisis ! At the 
decisive moment of this day Pappenheim’s troops 
were pillaging Halle. Summoned by a breathless or¬ 
derly, he could not by threats or entreaties divert 
from their plunder his six regiments of infantry, but 
followed by his horsemen he plunged with foaming 
speed into the fray. 

Piccolomini, who commanded the rest of the impe¬ 
rial cavalry, was retreating after six musket-balls had 
hit him, and seven horses had been shot under him. 
Now. Pappenheim, the most terrible personal fighter 
of the Empire and the Church, charged upon the 
Swedes; while he also scoured the field to seek a 
hand-to-hand combat with the King. Gustavus him¬ 
self had wished to meet this day the great champion. 

102 



Gustcivus Adolphus. 


Each died but not by the others hand. Pappenheim’s 
last words were of exultation at learning that the 
King had just preceded him to the realm where the 
thunder of the captains is silenced forever. Wallen¬ 
stein’s uniform was this day pierced with bullets, but 
his hour was not now. Already the assassin’s knife 
was sharpening, and soon he was a victim of the not 
groundless jealousy of the gloomy Emperor. Both 
armies, exhausted, welcomed the impartial, separat¬ 
ing night. Ferdinand ordered public thanksgiving: 
not for victory—he had lost the day—but for the 
death of Gustavus. 

When now the rage of battle and the shout of vic¬ 
tory were over, a cold and silent sadness fell upon 
the camp as they thought that he who had gone forth 
with them came not back, and that no living man 
could fill the place now vacant. Tears were on war- 
bronzed faces as in voiceless reverence they bore his 
mangled body to Sweden, to the last embrace of his 
queen, and to the tomb of his Gothic ancestors. A 
stone, still called Schwedenstein, marks the spot 
where he fell at Lutzen. 

“There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, 

To bless the turf whereon he lay, 

And Freedom shall awhile repair 
To dwell a weeping hermit there. ” 

The characters terrible and magnificent on which 
poets and historians love to dwell, now vanish from 
the worn and desolate stage of the Great War. The 
103 



Assays. 



strife went on for eighteen more of those bloody and 
wicked years. Generals from the great school of Gus- 
tavns matched themselves with almost uniform 
success against new Imperial commanders. At one 
time Forstenson’s cannon, under the walls of Vienna, 
and the city were saved only by those Hungarians 
whose services Austria has in a recent day requited 
so poorly. Wrangel and Banner, Horn and Forsten- 
son, aided at last by the French under Turenne (the 
King of France setting the policy of France before 
the demands of Rome) brought the Catholic powers 
to the terms of the great peace concluded at West¬ 
phalia, by which the relation of Catholic and Protest¬ 
ant were fixed, and to this day have remained with 
little change in Germany. But how desolate had 
that land become! A generation had perished in the 
war. The utmost effort of those not bearing arms 
had been needed to produce food for the combatants. 
Women had to take the labors of the field (a thing 
rare if not unknown to earlier Germans), a habit 
fixed to this day, upon a soil enriched with blood 
from every nation in Europe. Trade, art, and learn¬ 
ing had cringed like the Homeric flock in its cave 
during the passage of a storm. Year after year 
during the dark Thirty there came new destruction 
of cities and new wasting of rural districts until the 
demon of war could gorge himself in the spent land 
no longer. 


104 



6 rustacus Adolphus. 


It is timely now to pause and ask whether any hu¬ 
man interest could justify that long agony of war. 
Cannot the Right, the final concern, the final glory of 
mankind, be matured without this moistening of its 
roots with blood, this stirring of its foliage with the 
shock of battle? If any would answer; “Yes. No 
crisis of our race is relieved by war, no earthly need 
demands it, no principle is worth such a sacrifice,” 
ought they not again to read the pages of history ? 
The tiger element, pure and unmitigated, is in the 
human breast. When upon any issue this awakes to 
frenzy, as in the individual or the mass it is liable to 
do at any time, then they, the best, who would be 
their brethren’s keepers, who love the race and wish 
to uphold it, have to grapple with their fellows as 
with tigers. Revolting as war is to the preferences 
of the religious mind, yet Christianity, as it deals 
with all human interests, recognizes every necessity 
of the human race. So it was in those times of Sid¬ 
ney, Gustavus, and Hampden; so is it in our days of 
Havelock and Gordon, so it will be hereafter. 

Was not our hero, pouring out his prayer and song 
upon the battle-field, as goodly to look upon, as earn¬ 
est, as devout as Penn conciliating the Indians, or 
Whitfield preaching to the colliers ? In truth every 
valuable gain of liberty or religion seems to have 
been won and kept for our race by some form of mor¬ 
tal agony. A rule and formula to that effect seems 
105 



jEssays. 



to be historically established. Subject to this claim 
of agony on demand, we receive our birthright of civ¬ 
ilization and Christianity; subject to the same we 
shall transmute it to our successors. It remains a 
true man’s duty to be not squeamish but unflinching 
in the great behest; to uphold at even mortal cost 
that without which the race would be wretched, life 
ineffectual and undesirable, and the aims and callings 
of the world-problem unattained. 

Gustavus died at thirty four years, less than half 
the allotted lifetime of man. His active career began 
at twelve years. He did man’s business for twenty- 
two years. How are we to estimate such a life ? Not, 
surely, by its duration. Then it were a column broken 
lower than the middle of its shaft, a star gone out 
before reaching its zenith. Life is not in length of 
years. It is in emotion, experience, and achievement. 
What did this king, so early gone, accomplish ? 

He perfected the affairs of his own land, at home 
and abroad. He found poverty and disorder. His wise 
and vigorous management opened the resources of 
Sweden, gave confidence and activity to private enter¬ 
prise, and enlarged and insured the public revenues. 
He taught the Estates of the Realm to trust each 
other by showing that he found virtue and patriot¬ 
ism in them all, and he left them in perfect harmony. 
At his accession he found Denmark, Russia, and 
Poland leagued to crush Sweden: he left Sweden 
mistress of the North. 


106 



Gustavus Adolphus. 


We have seen how he turned the tide of war which 
was overwhelming Protestantism. He also fixed a 
better temper in Protestantism itself. As William of 
Orange was by his noble liberality a mitigating force 
upon Calvinism, so Gustavus softened the asperities 
of Lutheranism. Said he: “To win men from their 
heresies and to persuade them to eternal life is the 
office of the minister of religion. A ruler can have 
but one orthodoxy, and that is obedience to law. He 
who obeys the just laws of the State should not be 
molested, whether he be Catholic or Protestant. For 
his religious faith he is accountable to God alone.” 
These noble words were far in advance of the tem¬ 
pers around him. They had weight, and from so 
worthy an utterance were respected and obeyed. 
Indeed, he was not the only one to whom great 
thoughts and feelings came in the electric air of his 
century. It was the century of Milton, Orange, and 
Cromwell; and even in the far East the golden age 
of India was under the rule of Akbar, the most wise, 
just, and generous Moslem that ever wore a crown. 

But the chief value of the life of Gustavus was that 
it demonstrated in a high place the force of personal 
religion. He was a servant and champion of Christ 
each day and hour. On the whole we must account 
him blest in his career and in his departure. His 
life was led upon the toilsome, perilsome ridges of 
duty, and there death overtook him. His devoted wife 
107 



and his darling child were far away, and there was no 
fond breast on which the parting soul might rely: 
but he was one of those to whom the divine comforts 
are sufficient. In a longer life he must have met the 
vicissitudes of the state of man. His bodily vigor, 
extraordinary indeed; was beginning to yield, and 
must soon have become unequal to the toils of war 
and the demands of a great and conspicuous leader¬ 
ship. Much more, in a longer course he must have 
met those reverses which soon or late fall upon mili¬ 
tary operations, and to whose eclipsing shadow 
military glory is so sensitive. Now he left the field 
without having known defeat. As a warrior he went 
down with no pale gradation. 

“And now, his race of glory run, 

His was the set of tropic sun. 

With disc like battle-target red 
It rushes to its early bed ; 

Dyes the wide wave with ruddy light, 

Then sinks at once— and all is night. ” 

As he in his own warm youth, when told of Alexand¬ 
er’s early death, had asked; “Was it not enough of 
life when he had conquered kingdoms ? ” so might 
young ambition ask concerning Gustavus himself, 
whose death so nearly coincident with it in date of 
years, was so much more radiant with the flush of 
war like glory. 

More yet, was he not taken from temptation before 
which his virtue might have fallen ? Success is one 
108 * 



Gustavus Adolphus. 


of the severest trials. Already the first general of 
Europe, victor over men whose fame spanned two 
generations, the Empire beginning to bow before 
him, he was entering a glare that might have proved 
dazzling. Had such a course gone on, how must the 
pomp of earthly state, the glitter of earthly diadems, 
and the pride of earthly power have solicited one of 
whom it may be said that never for a day was he 
known to waver in his aim or falter in his effort 
toward a living crown from his Master’s hand ! He 
was happy in his living: we may account him not less 
happy in his dying. 

“Time throws on him a wide and tender light, 

Leaving that beautiful which once was so, 

Across the ages ; and the heart runs o’er 
With silent worship of this man of old, 

This dead but soeptered sovereign who still rules 
Our spirits with his ashes. ” 

As we have said, the century of Orange, of Akbar, 
and of Cromwell was one of rulers sitting upon 
thrones of power, justice, and generosity; but fore¬ 
most in splendor among these sovereigns we find this 
young Hero of Sweden. 





CHAPTEK Y. 


THE FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST IN OUR LITERATURE. 

I T is due to my friends to say why I invite them 
to a hearing on this subject. We have seen how 
the novel is of very recent growth in our field of let¬ 
ters. Poems we have had since Cadmon—twelve 
hundred years—but novels hardly more than one 
hundred. It is now one hundred and three years 
since first appeared a novel written by a woman. 
Women had already written a few things, but no tale 
giving a picture of life and manners appears on our 
literary record attributed to a woman. 

Yet the novel is the specialty in literature at which 
woman has worked at rivalry with man, and has 
usually equalled and often surpassed him. Her en¬ 
trance upon the novelist’s work is thus an epoch in 
woman’s history, and also in our literary annals. 

110 


The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 


The few novels preceding this epoch were such as 
no lady could have written: some of them she might 
blush to own that she had read. They had given dis¬ 
gust to people not by any means over nice, and to 
religious people a feeling of abhorrence not yet 
entirely dispelled. The novelist, like our vulgar 
showman, was becoming a desperate character. He 
gained the eye of the vulgar only, and, bent on pleas¬ 
ing his patrons, left them more vulgar than he found 
them. 

Our first woman-novelist was the person sadly 
needed. She showed the grave and thoughtful how 
a life-story might be woven of all life’s varied materi¬ 
als, setting forth the vulgar and the fashionable, the 
tender and the comical; from grave to gay, from 
lively to severe; with force and vividness, without a 
word or hint that could 

“Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear ; 

Or from the soft-eyed maiden steal a tear. ” 

She established the right of woman to a noble work 
which has enlarged and ennobled her sphere of ac¬ 
tion in this world, and has added much to the pure 
enjoyable treasures of our race. 

Many women have entered into her labors and con¬ 
tinued them with genius surpassing hers, telling us 
the ways of life and society with wit, grace, and mor¬ 
al feeling. She, however, opened to them their field 
and took away its reproach. Our text-books in Lit- 
111 



Essays. 


erature pay her too little honor. You will not account 
it unworthy of your attention to learn of this woman 
her path to authorship, and her fortunes on that 
path. 

Francis (or Fanny) Burney was born at Lynn, in 
June, 1752. She came of a race of artists. Her 
great grandfather was a man of large estates in 
Shropshire, which her grandfather did not inherit, 
but became a portrait painter. Her father, Charles, 
was an accomplished organist and teacher of music. 
He was the author of a History of Music which is 
still in high repute. Her older brother was as emi¬ 
nent for learning as she was eminent for genius. 
A younger brother rose to a high rank in the navy. 
One may say that if heredity be anything, we must 
account her happy in the gifts and callings of her an¬ 
cestral line. A portrait painter is by professional 
need a keen observer of facial lines and of general 
physiognomy. In the matter of the parentage of an 
English princess of the last century, the German 
artist, as an expert, gave this testimony: “I paint 
her fader; I paint her moder; I know dere lines on 
her.” 

This discernment and portrayal of nice distinctions 
in face and feature (such as was Shakespeare’s rare 
quality) is a prime power with the novelist, filling his 
book with the delicate charm of truthful variety. The 
art of Music, too, is in alliance with the course of 
112 




The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 


life, and gives aid in consistent development of a 
theme or plot through the shifts and changes 
incident to mortal experiences, where discord must 
alternate with harmony, and where at last all discord • 
proves to be harmony not understood. 

Nothing in our lady’s childhood foretokened her 
fame. She was small of stature, shy, and silent. At 
eight years she had not learned her letters, and knew 
what it was to be called a dunce. In 1760 her father 
came to London, and was soon settled in the plain 
but monumental house which had been the dwelling 
of Sir Isaac Newton. He at once took a high place 
in his profession. His pupils were of the highest 
rank; and he received from Oxford the Doctorate in 
Music. We shall see that his modest house became 
the centre for the most brilliant and famous society 
of the day. Fanny’s education was peculiar. She 
had just learned to read when her mother died, and 
all thereafter she did for herself. Her father’s en¬ 
gagements were often from seven in the morning 
until eleven at night. He could find time to pet and 
fondle the child, but nothing more. Two of his 
daughters went to a boarding school in Paris, but 
Fanny he could not spare. At home she had no 
teacher or governess. At fourteen, a sister taught 
her to write, and she began at that age to take pleas¬ 
ure in reading. Books, however, seem to have done for 
her scarcely more than living teachers were doing. 
113 



Essays. 


One hardly finds that she read. Among French 
authors she was certainly ignorant of Moliere and 
Voltaire, then of all most read in England. Of 
Churchill, then the favorite English poet of the hour, 
she knew nothing. Certainly, she was not a novel 
reader, for her father’s library contained but one nov¬ 
el—Fielding’s second class novel, Amelia. 

But human nature was open before her, and she 
was inclined to study it. Her father’s house was not 
in an aristocratic quarter, and he was a middle-class 
man. His children played with very humble little 
neighbors: they were children of a music teacher 
and their nearest friend was a wigmaker! Yet Lon¬ 
don had no brighter or better people than visited Dr. 
Burney’s. His character, manners, and attainments 
made him welcome at the first literary circles. Dr. 
Johnson, then at his meridian, was a fond visitor at a 
house where our little girl looked on him as more 
than human. Indifferent to music, hardly knowing 
by its sound the church-bell from the church-organ, 
he could spend the long winter evenings in unweary¬ 
ing delight of general conversation. Garrick would 
display his powers to the children, bringing them to 
tears, terror, or laughter at his will. Especially the 
great musicians of the day, men and women, soloists 
and primadonnas who demanded of nobles a hundred 
pounds sterling for an effort of their art at a levee, 
came to the Historian of Music as to one on whom 


114 




The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 

their fame depended, and in his inspiring presence 
they loved to exert their highest attainments. His 
simple, home concerts were the choicest musical occa¬ 
sions in London. They drew fortunate and favored 
listeners from the highest ranks. The shy and silent 
girl could see enter from their coaches crowding the 
narrow street, peers, ministers, and embassadors 
with their wives and daughters. Generals famed in 
war, travelers in farthest lands; Count Orloff, the 
representative and lover of the Russian empress, 
whose jeweled hands had strangled her husband, and 
whose gigantic person from his crest which touched 
the ceiling to his huge feet monopolizing the carpet— 
all these and more bowed, or listened, or conversed 
before her. Her young eye lost nothing of the scene. 
Little did she mingle with those throngs. She was 
small, not beautiful, not free in conversation. She 
rarely got beyond Yes or No. Yet in the back 
ground where she staid, the observed of no observers, 
she caught every peculiarity of every person, and 
drew keenly the nice distinctions that shade off 
humanity. Her head filled early with available ma¬ 
terial. Princes and statesmen, artists and poets, rich 
and poor, who had something besides their wealth 
and poverty, were constantly before her. Almost 
every remarkable specimen of the period—street mu¬ 
sicians and rulers of empires, savages from the 
Pacific Islands and exquisites from Paris were in the 
115 



Essays. 


moving panorama. Her invention (as we say in 
rhetoric) had not far to go. 

Full now of what she was thus seeing and hearing 
she began, after learning to write, to frame little fic¬ 
tions. These amused her sisters, but were kept from 
her father who never dreamed that wings were fledg¬ 
ing in the nest. Her stepmother, a wholesome 
woman in her way, discouraged the girl’s scribbling. 
As public sentiment then was it would be no credit 
or comfort to a reputable family to have a daughter 
known as a novel-writer. It would have affected her 
settlement in life, somewhat as being an actress 
would affect that of a young lady in our day. As a 
dutiful child she burned her fictions and made no 
new ones. Still her hand craved the pen, and she 
began a diary from which this story of her life is 
chiefly taken. 

She also began to correspond with an old friend of 
her father, Samuel Crisp. Mr. Crisp had a peculiar 
history: and its peculiarity was a simple one and by 
no means rare. It was that he had tried to do that 
for which Nature never designed him. Of course 
he failed; and his failure was his life-long shame and 
sorrow. This man to whose gifts and graces Miss 
Burney owed so much, was born to every advantage 
of fortune and position. He was noble in person and 
manners; familiar with the ways of the best society; 
a student, a man of excellent taste and judgment in 
116 




The First Woman Novelist in our Literature . 


many departments of art. He was a born critic. In 
art and literature it is in narrow spheres that work 
ers work, and few can comprehend and appreciate 
what is done by others. A poet seldom appreciates 
a poet, still more rarely does he appreciate, say, a his¬ 
torian, as well as does he who is neither poet or 
historian. The gift of broad, wise, and generous 
criticism does not go with the gift of creative power. 
The best critic of poetry that I know never wrote a 
line. One may be a keen and clear critic of music 
who can himself neither sing or play. Of fifteen 
hundred workmen at Waltham hardly five understand 
a watch. If such a one, not content with his clear 
gift of appreciative listening and of judicious criticiz¬ 
ing, shall undertake the song, he may make himself 
ridiculous. So our endowments are variously given; 
“to one the speaking with tongues, to another the in¬ 
terpretation of tongues.” 

Mr. Crisp fancied that he, so clear an authority on 
dramatic criticism, could write a drama. He pro¬ 
duced one on the Roman story of Virginia. Though 
Garrick brought it out, though it was revised and 
amended, it was a failure and only a failure—too 
weak and absurd to be read or played. Turning his 
back on all he could do and do well, Mr. Crisp lost all 
heart and hope, and became a cynic and a hater of 
mankind. He went to a lonely home in Surrey, far 
from highway or byway, and there for thirty solitary 
117 



Essays. 


years gnashed his teeth at an unappreciative world; 
mourning the fate of his tragedy, like Rachel refus¬ 
ing to be comforted. Twenty-eight years after, a 
letter from him shows his ever-fresh rage and grief. 

This literary Timon of Athens kept relations with 
the Burneys only. None but they knew his lonely 
whereabouts in Surrey, in which he looked like a 
sick lion in his untracked cave. 

In happier days he had been a fond and frequent 
visitor of the family. He had suggested and enjoyed 
Dr. Burney’s parlor concerts, and on his rare and un¬ 
announced visits to London they were his life-renewing 
solace. As his years rolled on and gout and old age 
held him to his gloomy retreat, he longed for at least 
a reflected glimpse of the world from which he had 
gone into self exile; toward wliose gay, pleasing, an¬ 
xious, bitter scenes he could not do otherwise than 
cast a lingering look behind. 

He urged the leisurely Frances to send him full ac¬ 
counts of the occasions once so dear to him. And 
now we come to our reason for telling of a career at 
once so ludicrous, sad, and instructive; of a man of 
whom you will never care to hear more than I have 
told you; w T hose name you will hardly find in an En¬ 
cyclopedia; who hangs over oblivion by this one frail, 
brittle thread. 

Miss Burney’s letters to this gouty and gloomy 
hermit, as far as published, show the power of the 

118 



The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 


coming novelist. She catches everything peculiar 
in character and manner; she groups people as they 
actually stood, moved, and spoke; and enlivens all 
with racy, mirth-rousing humor. 

Such letters are a prelude to novel-writing. Like 
Dickens, she began to have an irrepressible tendency 
to posturing in the centre of groups constructed of 
people either well-known, or imaginary, or both. 

At length one little story came to haunt her and 
gave her no rest. Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful lady, 
made an unfortunate marriage; and died in a year, 
leaving an infant daughter. This motherless child 
was by birth connected on one side with the highest, 
and on the other with the lowest society, and was 
thus like a ship in contrary winds and currents, liable 
to a peculiar career. Fanny’s imagination took hold 
of this case and began to body forth the scenes, glad 
and sad, through which such a career might pass. 

Around the timid orphan she gathered under such 
names as pleased her such characters as her fancy 
approved, some of which she had seen in her quiet 
though extensive observings at home, and some of 
which she must have created. She had a course sea- 
captain ; one fop insolent but blazing with finery, and 
another as insolent with finery seedy and shabby; a 
French governess old and wrinkled, but highly 
roughed and flirting a fan, screaming now bad 
French and now worse English; a poet out at the el- 
119 



Essays. 


bows, as poets often were; a stupid footman; a fun- 
loving, young nobleman; mansions, coaches, and 
robbers. These airy beings she grouped, and voiced, 
and endowed with passions, affections, and destinies. 
Her creative ardor grew and became irresistible. You 
anticipate the result. It was the novel, Evelina. 

Thus the first English novel of woman’s writing 
was written not for fame or money but for the relief 
of a haunted, over-crowded brain. She wrote because 
she could not help it. As Pope says of his early ver¬ 
sifying, “I lisped in numbers, for the numbers 
came,” so might Miss Burney say, “I wrote a novel, 
for the novel came.” 

And now to get it before the public ! She was hu¬ 
man enough to think her novel a good one—not by 
comparing it with other novels, for she had read 
none, but because it gave life and character as she 
knew them to be among notable people, and in em¬ 
phatic conditions. She, bashful and shy, was yet 
strongly desirous of distinction. These ill-matched 
but often paired traits led her to wish an anonymous 
publication, as promising fame without risk. Her 
sister was her confidant. 

Dodsley, the leading publisher of the day, would 
not look at an anonymous manuscript. One, Lowndes, 
who had his business record yet to make, gave the 
matter a'hearing, and corresponded with the writer, 
“Miss Grafton, at the ‘Orange’ Coffee House.” 

120 



The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 


And now she had a filial thought and would not come 
out unless her father knew and consented to it. She 
frankly told him that she had written a book; that 
she did not wish him to see it; that she proposed to 
publish it anonymously, but that she could do noth¬ 
ing without his consent. He stared, burst out laugh¬ 
ing, kissed her, told her to do just as she liked, and 
turned to his music without even asking her the name 
or nature of her book ! Lowndes gave £20. for the 
manuscript. His fortune was made, and so was her 
fame. In 1778 the book appeared. 

Never could it be more truly said of a book that it 
rested on its merits. Lowndes was not an Appleton 
or a Harper. The author being unknown no friendly 
circle pushed and applauded, making admiration of it 
fashionable. The best people were rather turning 
away from novels; for the market which Richardson 
and Fielding had formed and toned, was being de¬ 
praved and disenchanted by supplies from their 
unworthy successors. A story about a young lady’s 
entrance into the world one would suppose had no 
special antecedent charm. 

Fanny’s very natural anxiety as to the fate of her 
book had its first relief from the circulating libraries. 
The readers of new books were asking for Evelina , 
and more copies were needed. Then the London 
Review and the Monthly Magazine gave it favorable 
notice. Soon the book, whose binding would have 
121 



Essays. 


classed it with our “yellow-covered,” was found on 
marble and mahogany tables; eagerly read by schol¬ 
ars and statesmen, while sumptuous volumes lay by 
its side neglected. Burke, crowded with the cares of 
state, could not tear himself from the book until grey 
morn was looking in at the window. 

Lowndes’ shop door, in dull Fleet-street, was blaz¬ 
ing with the liveried carriages of lords who crowded 
to purchase Evelina, and to ask who wrote it, to 
which he could answer no more than they. 

The mystery must be solved: Fanny told it to her 
sisters, to her brothers—the great scholar, and the 
gallant admiral—and they in joy and pride of heart 
told it abroad. 

Her father wept in rapture as he read the book. 
Our last glimpse of Mr. Crisp before he enters that 
den in Surrey to come to London no more, is as he 
shakes his fist at his “dear daughter,” in soft resent¬ 
ment at not having shared her secret. 

Her fame was assured when her name reached 
Mrs. Thrale. Mrs. Thrale was by her gifts of mind 
and heart, and by her refined and generous hospital¬ 
ity, empress of the literary realm, a hundred years 
ago. In her home in London and her country-seat 
at Streatham, she gathered all that was in her day 
eminent for learning and genius. Burke, Gibbon, 
Keynolds the great painter, Garrick, Sheridan, and 
others too many for naming were in the dazzling con- 
122 



The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 


stellation around her. When the book appeared this 
lady was in her zenith. She took Miss Burney to her 
heart as a younger sister, and the shy girl was 
brought into the best society of the period under the 
auspices of Mrs. Thrales’ pleasing manners and 
loving heart. The epoch in Fanny‘s life was extra¬ 
ordinary. Her cup was suddenly brimming with 
sweet flattery and warm, true friendship. 

Dr. Johnson was now an inmate of the open, ample 
mansion. He had seen her at her father’s house 
without noticing her more than to take from her 
hand his twentieth cup of tea. He was now charmed 
with her book, declaring it superior to anjdhing of 
Fielding and hardly below Richardson. He kissed 
her, took her in his huge old arms, praised every¬ 
thing about her, and begged her to be good. Her 
Recollections show how loving and gentle he was, 
though his manners might be often rude. 

And how did this loud applause and reverent hom¬ 
age affect her ? Her record shows her deep though 
fluttering joy at the honors she had won. There is 
no trace of vanity. She had made her family and Mr. 
Crisp happy, and of this she was intensely glad. She 
frankly puts down her triumphs and her compli¬ 
ments: for they were to be read at home by her 
father and by the few to whom the laurels which her 
genius was winning gave a pure and reasonable de¬ 
light. No trace of vanity appears in the artless, 
123 



Essays. 

girl-like way of telling these dear ones how the world 
was treating her. 

So came into existence the first English novel writ¬ 
ten by a women; the first important work written by 
any English women, unless we except Mrs. Monta¬ 
gue’s Letters. In 1878 we might have celebrated a 
“ Woman’s Centennial of Authorship ” in our language. 

What is Evelina ? It is not yet out of print or out 
of market, though so many if not better in themselves 
yet more in accord with our age, and tlierfore more 
intelligible and enjoyable, have since appeared. It 
gives “ a young lady’s entrance into the world.” One 
could not represent its quality by extracts compatible 
with our limits. It shows quickness of discernment, 
liveliness of invention, and a skill worthy of Thacka- 
ray or Dickens in portraying the oddities and humors 
of English society. In passion she is weak and pro¬ 
saic, but rich in good sense and right feeling. She is 
marvellous in her seizing of all social follies and ab¬ 
surdities. She i^ always clear; and, for all that 
society changes, her personages are sufficiently hu¬ 
man, and her lessons rich enough in true wisdom to 
be relished and appreciated for many years to come. 
Her skill is a woman’s skill, akin to the Shakesperian 
skill, of seeing the differences between people, and 
their different behaviors under the same circumstan¬ 
ces. Her plot is only a frame upon which to spread 
her characters. Her style in Evelina is easy, clear, 
124 



The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 


and free from offensive faults. It is a natural style, 
such as an intelligent schoolgirl might use—not yet 
brought up to energy or brilliancy. 

We might now, as far as professional duty is con¬ 
cerned, take our leave of Miss Burney. At the age 
of twenty-six she has made an epoch in English liter¬ 
ature, an epoch in the history of woman. We have 
seen how she came to do it. The fulness of time for 
it had come. The place had opened: she stepped 
forward to fill it. She filled it well; and her place is 
as assured as were a tablet in Westminster Abbey. 

Would you like to hear the story of her life for the 
remaining sixty-two years ? There is instruction and 
amusement in it. 

In commerce fame follows fortune: in literature, 
fortune, if it comes at all, comes after fame. Evelina 
won for its author £20., applause, and troops of 
friends. A successful drama would win her ample 
monies; and, urged by her friends, she wrote a com¬ 
edy, the Witlings. Dr. Johnson gave her advice; 
Sheridan offered to support it with all his might; and 
Murphy, the most skilful of managers, was to shape it 
to the temper of its evening. When it was written, 
Sheridan and Murphy were too polite to tell her what 
they thought of it. She sent the manuscript to the 
cave in Surrey, and her aged Crisp seeing through 
spectacles for her what he could not when his eyes 
were good see for himself, said that it was an utter 
125 



Essays. 




failure, and told her wherein. She frankly thanked 
him for “this greatest proof of his candor, sincerity, 
and friendship.” She added: “I wont be mortified, 
I will be proud to find one who loves me well enough 
to speak plain truth to me.” Her frank, sweet utter¬ 
ance must have cheered that last winter of his 
discontent. 

She turned now to frame a tale which was to be a 
grand and various picture gallery, filled in all its 
length with men and women, each marked by some 
strong, characteristic feature. All the best and most 
distinguished whom she had ever seen, all most queer 
and peculiar was to be there. In a year it was fin¬ 
ished—not by spontaneous and irresistible growth, 
like Evelina , but by set purpose and judicious, per¬ 
sistent labor. 

Those who read the manuscript declared it to be 
the best novel of the age. Crisp spent his last breath 
in energetic praise, offering to insure its triumph for 
half a crown. The publisher made a profit for him¬ 
self in paying her two thousand pounds. 

It appeared in the summer of 1782. Expectation 
had been intense, but was amply satisfied. Cecilia , 
the second novel, was produced, and still remains 
among our English Classics. 

Miss Burney had now seen thirty years, rising to 
her zenith by a smooth and rapid progress seldom 
allowed to mortals. It was time for clouds to rise. 


126 



The First Woman Novelist in our Literature . 


Her best friend, Mr. Crisp, called her to Surrey. She 
stood by his death bed, and followed his hearse, a 
sincere and almost solitary mourner. Soon she was 
standing in tears at Dr. Johnson’s stairway, who 
sank too rapidly to give her his blessing. Mrs. Thrale 
in tears and widowhood, broke with all her friends 
by marrying an Italian dancing master. 

And now she threw away what was left of blessings 
by throwing away herself. It was in this wise: 

There was a Mrs. Delaney, niece of Lord Lans- 
downe, of whom we read as patron of Waller and of 
Pope; and whose husband, long deceased, had tried 
to cheer the sad days of Swift. She was living at 
Windsor, on a pension, and the King and Queen 
sometimes called at her house. Miss Burney had 
been introduced to this lady, and was visiting her. 
After dinner Mrs. Delaney was taking a nap, and the 
guests were at some pleasant game, when without 
knock or announcement the door opened and a stout 
gentleman with a star on his breast and an explosive 
“What! What! What!” on his lips, entered. It 
was George III., and all scampered as from a ghost! 
Mrs. Delaney arose and greeted him; and then he 
fell to catechizing Miss Burney about herself. Soon 
the Queen came in, and both were pleased. In a few 
days another visit. Their Majesties spoke in a criti¬ 
cal and patronizing way of books and authors; 
though their opinions were queer—“ Was there ever 
127 



j Essays. 


such sad stuff as most part of Shakespeare ? What! 
What! ” A royal critic ! 

The result was that she accepted the post of a 
keeper of the Queen’s robes—a sort of gilded slav¬ 
ery. For the honor of life under such royalty, and 
two hundred pounds a year, she gave up authorship, 
society, and the aspirations at w r hich her genius now 
waved its joyous wing. For five years she mixed 
snuff and stuck pins for Queen Charlotte, came at her 
bell to dress and undress her, and was on the alert to 
serve her from early morning until late at night. 
Stupid etiquette and stupid people; “snuffy old 
drones of the German hive,” these in place of Burke 
and Sheridan, and her father’s brilliant evenings! 
Sometimes the Court took a short journey. Once she 
went to Oxford, but not as author of Cecilia , whom 
scholars and Faculties would have delighted to honor, 
but as a waiting woman who stood faint with hunger 
and fatigue w r hile the Queen sat at luncheon. When 
was genius so ignored and degraded ? 

She caught a glimpse of the world, on which she 
had risen like a star, at the trial of Warren Hastings. 
She there was recognized with a bow by Burke just 
after his opening speech. Sad to say, so had she 
taken blight in the dull air of the Court that this no¬ 
blest man in England, her own early admirer, who 
had made her father organist at Chelsea, she uncivil¬ 
ly treated because their Majesties disliked him! She 
128 



The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 

records this in her Diary , and it shows how her pal¬ 
ace life was spoiling her. Freedom, light, joy, and 
beauty were fading out of her conceptions. A hard 
life ! For four years she had but one long interview' 
with her father. Her health gave way, yet her slav¬ 
ery did not ralax. She was rapidly declining. Then 
the literary world, which keenly felt its disappoint¬ 
ment, seeing the state of the case, was moved with 
grief and shame over such a genius pining in such a 
cage. Burke, generously ignoring her rudeness, 
Reynolds, Horace Walpole, the great physicians too, 
joined in urging Dr. Burney to set her free. Fasci¬ 
nated as he was with royalty and its glamour, he at 
length was forced to direct her to resign. The Queen 
consented with bad grace, as if angry that England 
was a free conntry. The King, in creditable temper, 
said that the girl ought to have a pension. It was the 
Queen’s affair, and £100 a year were at length given. 

Miss Burney went home free, but prostrate in 
health; and no more, like the struck eagle stretched 
upon the plain, to soar mid rolling clouds. These five 
meridian years were lost, and the excellency of power 
which the world had hailed was gone never to return. 
Home life, conversation with the learned and bril¬ 
liant, travel through England, restored health and 
spirits, but not her intellectual habits,— 

“The torch, when once wasted, ah, when shall it burn ? ” 
About this time events in France drove many exiles 
129 




Essays. 


to England, and of these a company of the higher 
rank settled near the Burneys, in Surrey. Fanny 
visited them, and found there wit, eloquence, and 
every courtly grace; and was fascinated with such as 
Tallej^rand and Madame De Stael. There was Gen¬ 
eral D’Arblay, honorable, handsome, and penniless 
by the Revolution. She took lessons in French of 
him, fell in love, and married him. Their estate was 
her pension, for General D’Arblay found nothing to 
do for a living. She wrote Camilla , far below Cecil¬ 
ia, at least in style; but the public was glad to hear 
from her again, and the book brought her more mon¬ 
ey than a novel had ever brought before, about 
£4000. Still, it was not popular. 

Soon after this event General and Mrs. D’Arblay 
went to Paris, where D’ Arblay had some prospect of 
being restored to his place in the army. For ten 
years of the Napoleonic wars she was unable to visit 
England. At length, while Napoleon was in Russia, 
she obtained permission to bring her son, born before 
leaving England, to see his grandfather. She was in 
time to receive his blessing as he was dying in his 
eighty-seventh year. 

One more book, The Wanderer , she published in 
1814, which quietly dropped into oblivion, whence it 
never emerged. 

In that year her son, Alexander, entered Cam¬ 
bridge University. He was a noble, youth, wurthy of 
130 





The First Woman Novelist in our Literature . 

such a mother and of such ancestry. In his college 
he won an honorable place, and was elected a Fellow 
of Christ’s College. His favorite study was the pure 
Mathematics. He became a clergyman, and was of 
promise to become one of the eminent preachers of 
his day, but prematurely died. 

In 1832 she published the Memoirs of her father. 
Her own death occurred in 1840, when she was in 
her eighty eighth year. Two years later her Diary 
was published, from which our knowledge of her is 
gained. 

Of the Burney family it may be said, as has been 
said of Walter Scott, that when its bright, consummate 
flower appears, the tree seems commonly near its end. 
Other Burneys we hear of. Her own brilliant gener¬ 
ation—herself, her brothers, the scholar and the 
admiral, had no successors. 

How strange her life appears ! She survived her 
fame for sixty-two years. In that time two entire 
generations arose, passed across the stage, and van¬ 
ished. Men not yet born when she was already 
famous, had run notable careers and died while she 
was yet living. Coleridge, Cowper, Pitt, Erskine, 
Scott, and Byron had come and gone. Yet her early 
works, Evelina and Cecilia , through lapse of years, 
in spite of change of manners, and in spite of all ri¬ 
vals, held a high place in public esteem. She saw 
herself become a classic,—Land of Promise which 
131 




Essays. 


many an author sees arise in all its charms before 
and beyond him, she lived to enter! It might almost 
be said that she enjoyed posthumous fame, 30 long 
was the quiet interval between the glory of her zen¬ 
ith and her departure from the western horizon. 

Her success had upon other gifted women an effect 
like Winkleried upon the Swiss. She opened the way 
to a province of literature rich for them in pleasure 
and power. Mrs. Hannah More, whom Miss Burney 
found before her in the throng at Mrs. Thrale’s, with 
Garrick, and Dr. Johnson, and the brilliant of the 
day, took up her pen; and, by and by, after many 
excellent and imperishable works, followed Miss 
Burney in Coelehs , a book, however, lost upon her 
illustrious pupil, Macaulay. Miss Porter, Mrs. Edge- 
worth, Miss Austin, Mrs. Badcliff, and Mrs. Opie all 
found an occupation at their hand: and for the re¬ 
mainder of the century woman’s work in fiction far 
surpassed in quantity and quality that which man 
was doing. 

With the opening of our century, Sir Walter Scott, 
who in the days of Miss Burney’s fame was reading 
Percy’s Reliques , and listening to the Border Tales 
of the Me Ivors with wonder and delight, wrote no 
novel until twenty-five years later. Then he came 
upon the literary world from the North as suddenly 
as an Aurora Borealis upon the sky; and in the 
blaze of his genius all stars grew pale. 

132 



The First Woman Novelist in our Literature. 


Under his magic wand the novel came to its place 
in our literature, furnishing in our day nearly three 
quarters of our reading: woman’s patronage of it 
being in the ratio of three to two, whether as author 
or reader. 

So we hold ourselves justified, as we said in the 
beginning, in presenting our first woman-novelist and 
her work; seeing that she leads a train so bright and 
broad, so various, and so valuable. 





CHAPTER VI. 


GAMBETTA. 

A STUDY of our own times has its perplexities. 

Events do not “ burn their own smoke; ” they 
are for a while obscured by it: when it clears away 
the beholder too is gone, leaving his successor to get 
the events at second hand, and to put them on 
record. Still, one who for some dozen years before 
1882 was watching the course of history in Western 
Europe clearly saw the forms of great men moving. 
Three of these .seemed to be managing the destinies 
each of his own great people. Bismark, Gladstone, 
and Gambetta—men widely differing from each other 
were living rulers and exponents of their own Ger¬ 
many, England, and France. One might more wish 
to understand them than to understand Wallenstein, 
Walpole, or Richelieu; for they have acted in our liv¬ 
ing present, and done something to make our own 
134 


Gcimbetta. 


age sublime. Let us, then, inquire about Gambetta, 
aiming to learn of him through our cotemporary 
France, and of our France through him, a matter 
nearer to us than Hecuba and the fate of Troy; and 
quite as affecting, could we clearly see it. A great 
personage vanished, at forty-four years, from the 
longing gaze of France and of mankind. Who was 
he ? and what has been his part in affairs ? 

There was nothing notable in the place or in the 
conditions of his birth. Cahors is a town of scant 
four thousand people, a little more than two hundred 
miles due south of Paris, where the little river Lot 
wanders in many a winding bout through sunny 
meadows to join the Garonne coming from the dim, 
blue mountains of the south-east, to reach the bay of 
Biscay and the Atlantic. In this dull town and fer¬ 
tile vale Gambetta’s father was a merchant of modest 
grade, in groceries and cheap china. His father had 
come from Genoa, and his Italian name of stately 
sound does not glide into French as easily as the 
names of Mirabeau and Napoleon, also brought from 
Italy to France. His mother was of pure French 
stock. Thus for the third time within a hundred 
years has France had a ruler from Italy. Mirabeau 
had said: “When I shake my terrible locks all 
France trembles.” Napoleon, brushing into oblivion 
the weaklings of a thousand years, said: “I succeed 
Charlemagne! ” It was Gambetta’s fortune to say to 
the startled nation: “ Submit now—or sink ! ” 

135 



Essays. 


Of simple childhood, its playing in the lanes of 
Cahors and sauntering along the windings of the 
sparkling river, the boy had little. His frame did 
not grow square and strong, but his head sat grandly 
back, giving him a stentorian chest and throat. For 
the sports of childhood—perhaps from an early dis¬ 
aster to his eye—he had little inclination. Even in 
those young, free days he was too intense and pas¬ 
sionate for common, simple play. 

Soon he was at a school conducted by a Jesuit 
who, with the priests, tried hard to bring the fiery 
spirit into the service of the church. The young Ead- 
ical was among his schoolmates already a violent 
declaimer of Kepublican appeals; and his teachers, 
discouraged, were even then foreboding what that 
voice might do when it should ring out over the ex¬ 
citable throngs of France. A Clerical (Conservative) 
he could not be. The brief course of narrow and 
uncomfortable study at the lyceum or high school of 
his town was soon exhausted. He became clerk, then 
accountant in his father’s small establishment; but 
for him a life of traffic and reckoning had no charm. 
He wished to study law and dispense justice in his 
Department. His mother shared his dreams of emi¬ 
nence. She managed to hoard away, piece by piece, 
a little store of silver. Then, unknown to the father, 
he and his trunk were smuggled into a post-wagon 
for the train, and he was soon on the railway for 
Paris, beyond paternal veto. 

136 



Gambetta. 


Scant of funds but rich in glowing hopes, he found 
the cheapest of lodgings with most frugal diet; and 
entered as student of law in the venerable University 
of the Sarbonne. His white-bearded professor was 
amazed at the pupil’s voice. Learning the history of 
the case, he wrote to the angry father an earnest es¬ 
timate of what that splendid endowment of his son 
might win of power and fame in the courts of France. 
The father was conciliated, and thereafter supplied 
funds ample for his truant’s needs. 

In two years Leon had completed the four years 
course. In the two years remaining before he 
could be admitted to the bar, he studied widely in 
art and in general literature, writing thereof for the 
journals. With politics he had thus far had nothing 
to do. 

He soon became the lively centre of a company of 
artists, actors, and journalists, to whom the wondrous 
music of his voice and his mastery in broad, keen, 
brilliant conversation gave an unfailing refreshment 
and delight. 

He now came into the service of Cremieux, the first 
Israelite ever admitted to the French bar. It hap¬ 
pened as follows: Gambetta was to make his first 
plea in court. He had studied upon it all night; he 
was in bad condition, excited, and without self-con¬ 
trol. His opponent, Du Faure, still at seventy-six a 
vigorous man, had the case, for reason of his own, 
137 



Essays. 


adjourned a week. Advised by an old attorney, Gam 
betta talked his plea over in a conversational style, 
secured a good night’s rest and a light breakfast 
before his final appearance; had all at the tip of his 
tongue; was not afraid of his own voice; was eloquent 
to the jury, and reverently brief to the judge. Cre- 
mieux, then high as an advocate, was delighted, and 
secured to his own service the rising luminary. Gam- 
betta was now in the office of the greatest business 
(civil) lawyer in France; where industry, accuracy, 
and fidelity were qualities of prime necessity. In 
these, which require stern self-denial, he was never 
wanting: never was a life more intense and toilsome 
than that which he was now leading. 

He now began to report and comment upon the 
doings of the Legislative Body, siding by sympathy 
of born temperament with the party of Young 
France as against the Empire. He was soon to pass 
from the legal to the political arena. In the coup 
d'etat (a name which Louis Napoleon made current in 
modern languages, and which does not improve by 
translation) one, Baudin, a famous Republican, had 
perished in defending a barricade. Sixteen years 
later, when the Napoleonic grasp on France was now 
weakening, his old friends and partners thought the 
time had come to build his monument. Delescluze, 
who had long laid flowers on Baudin’s tomb, and who 
now started a subscription for its honoring in marble, 
138 



Gambetta 


was prosecuted by the government. Gambetta was 
counsel for the defense. 

His occasion came when he was at the age of twen¬ 
ty-seven, the age at which Demosthenes, Cicero, and 
Chatham had come before the world; and if he did 
prove himself the peer of those immortal orators, he 
certainly surpassed all rivals in his own generation. 
No conviction could be had: he swept all before him. 
Vivian, the judge, was both deaf and near-sighted. 
For this very reason it is said the Emperor appointed 
him; and he always went over cases in chambers 
with a reporter. Gambetta, therefore, spoke without 
interruption: when the judge read the speech it was 
too late—the lightning had struck. 

And what was Gambetta’s oratory? For fourteen 
years he was the foremost orator of the world. The 
inquiry deserves an effort at reply. 

Eloquence comes of the man, the subject, and the 
occasion. First the man: A poised, not commanding 
figure that grew stouter with years; head profuse of 
Italian black hair, whitening prematurely; dark eyes 
deeply set, the one of glass giving a singularly fixed 
and fascinating expression; nostrils like those of 
Job’s warhorse, terrible in their swell and quiver; 
above heavy eyebrows, over a countenance which 
lighted up with a most engaging sympathy, a fore¬ 
head broad rather than high, along the veins of 
which thought seemed almost visibly to vibrate; an 
139 



Essays. 


air nut sad so much as earnest and heavy-laden—such 
marked a man to whom you would bend forward in 
listening attitude before his lips had parted, so many 
were the marks set on him to give the world assur¬ 
ance of an orator. 

His voice ! It was the grandest in France. Capable 
of every modulation, and keeping at every pitch the 
clear, incisive, southern accent and Italian distinct¬ 
ness of consonants. Big and manly, its deepest tones 
rippled over the assembly however large; and as it 
rose like the voice of the wind, with the glow of 
heart and the growth of ideas, it lost no purity or 
sweetness for the force it gained. It conveyed the 
speaker’s soul to every man within its range without 
the loss of the most delicate suggestion. Impressive as 
was his personal appearance, they who saw him as he 
spoke seemed to have but small advantage over those 
who only heard him. The latter, like those who listen 
to the Freiburg organ, felt little need of seeing the 
player. His voice wielded that one of modern lan¬ 
guages best fitted for the orator’s use; next after the 
Italian the lingua Toscana nella bocca llomana. The 
French language is a concord of sweet sounds easily 
made forcible; and, by predominence of vowels, is 
relatively slow of utterance. Gambetta was fortunate 
in his oratorical outfit. 

Capacity of passion is indispensable to oratory. 
Gambetta almost in his unchildlike childhood could 
140 



Gambetta. 


rouse bis fellows with storms of feeling from his own 
breast. In the trial already mentioned there were two 
hours of tempest in every phase. His appeal for just 
liberty of hand, and tongue, and pen, involved a re¬ 
view of the rise and progress of the Empire, its plans 
and policy, its crimes and perils. France lay bound 
and gagged at a tyrant's feet, but not forever or for 
long. She would snap her bonds and rise, and then 
his turn would come. In this terrific arraignment the 
volcanic passion of the orator roused a passion in 
every breast; and the magistrates (we have spoken of 
the judge) were dumb with wonder. 

His subject: When he came upon the French plat¬ 
form the Empire was in the weeds of its decay. “ The 
Irrepressible, the Human Mind,” as Louis Blanc 
said, was by its own elasticity rising to remonstrate, 
to resist, and to overthrow. Then came the German 
war, a sweep of storm which destroyed much, and 
damaged and darkened all. After this were those 
changeful, complex struggles of plan, principle, and 
policy as to the shape and working of the Kepublic, 
the strife of factions, the various forces under which 
for a century the French government has been swing¬ 
ing like a pendulum. Every one of his last twelve 
years gave the orator a great living theme which 
stirred the souls of Frenchmen and seriously involved 
the interests of France. 

His occasions: They were many, like the waves; 

141 



Essays. 


yet one, like the sea. It mattered little where he 
stood, whether at Paris or at Tours, in court or in 
Senate, before soldiers or before peasants, his real 
audience was France: and, more, it was Germany 
and England. His occasions were always great, for 
millions waited upon his words and took feeling, in¬ 
telligence, and purpose from his lips. So were given 
him these three abiding elements of eloquence: and 
whatever opinion we may come to have of him as a 
man or statesman, we must accord to him the first 
place among the orators of his generation. 

The defense of the friend of Baudin ended his 
practice of law. The next Spring (1869) he was 
elected to the National Legislature from both Belle¬ 
ville (Paris) and Marseilles, over Lessups, the Emper¬ 
or’s man; and Thiers, the Orleanist. He was at once 
recognized as the leader of the opposition to the Em¬ 
pire, an Irreconcilable, though with practical good 
sense holding kindly with the Orleanists. 

He now went for his health to the mineral waters 
at Ernes. Bismarck was there on the same errand. 
“ Who is that young man ? ” asked the mighty Chan¬ 
cellor, his eye marking Gambetta among throngs of 
common men. The new-risen statesman was brought 
to the veteran, who seemed refreshed with the frank¬ 
ness and vigor of his conversation. Of politics they 
seem to have said nothing. Their future relations it 
was not given them to forecast! 

142 



Gambetta. 


Entering service as a legislator, his swift wrath 
beat down the failing Emperor’s plans and ministries 
until a panic fairly arose. To divert attention and 
to seek to overwhelm the flame with a flood of nation¬ 
al glory, Napoleon rashly gave to Germany that 
welcome occasion for war. Gambetta loved Napoleon 
little, but Erance much ; and for his country’s sake 
he opposed nothing. The war was inevitable; it had 
already come, and it was no time for discord at home. 
Then Napoleon went down at Sedan, changing a 
brief rule in France for a brief confinement in Ger¬ 
many, then a brief refuge in England, and then a 
transit to a realm where nothing is brief. 

Now (Sept. 1870) came the intense, eventful months 
of Gambetta’s life. Not yet thirty-two years of age, 
he was already the Republican leader; and gathering 
the ablest veterans of his party, .he organized the 
Government of the National Defense. He became 
Minister of the Interior, and to his duties were added 
those of Minister of War. Few who noticed them 
can have forgotten his prodigious exertions. When 
the Germans encompassed Paris, the French Govern¬ 
ment (Gambetta could say with some truth: “I am 
the State ! ”) rose from Paris in a balloon; and went 
seeking a foothold and a Capital at the will of the 
changeful winds. Gambetta and his companion, 
Spuller, were found at Tours, a hundred miles south¬ 
west of Paris. He was received with a fury of 
143 



HJssays. 


enthusiasm, as a very angel stepping from the clouds 
with deliverance for France. Even Garibaldi was 
there to speak counsel and encouragement. 

Starting now from a new point in his career, he 
became Dictator; and without him could not man 
lift hand or foot in all the land of France. But what 
a France was that! The best part of the French 
army was shut up at Metz, with Bazaine. Most of 
the remainder had with Napoleon surrendered at Se¬ 
dan. Nearly all the artillery and material of war 
was within the beleaguered walls of Paris. What 
more seemed to remain than to go down with decency 
in a catastrophe which could not be averted ? 

There was not an army that had not suffered 
defeat; there was but one general who had not dis¬ 
graced his country, that Chanzy, who, if we may 
believe the Germans, had no peer on either side; who 
came so near sweeping all foes from France; and 
who died two days before Gambetta’s funeral. Such 
shameful results had come from twenty years of a 
showy despotism which had deluded and weakened 
that it might govern France. 

For four months Gambetta was now the soul of 
the country. He knew how to appeal to every living 
force in France; and while Paris was full of incapa- 
bles he from without saved his country’s honor. With 
amazing rapidity he and Freycinet created the army 
of the Loire. 


144 



Gambetta. 


He made the most of the ragged remnants of the 
regulars, adding six hundred thousand recruits, bad¬ 
ly clothed and poorly equipped, yet far from being 
mere food for powder. They were no match for the 
splendid forces of Prince Karl; but they held him in 
check, threatened his communications, and even gain¬ 
ed a victory at Coulmiers. 

Peace came at length; but on what terms ! When 
Napoleon had procured the affront of his embassador 
at Biarritz, he was proposing une promenade de Ber¬ 
lin. It came nearer being ein Spciziergang nach 
Paris, though it proved to neither a purely pleasure- 
able excursion. Thousands of millions of treasure 
went to the “Land of the Milliards,” a feai'ful drain 
upon France and a doubtful gain to Germany. Gam¬ 
betta called the Assembly together to pass upon the 
terms of peace. Foremost in war, he accepted the 
second place at its close. In fact he gave up office, 
and, broken in health, retired to Spain. He was 
abroad during the insurrection of the Commune. 

At the next election he was returned in nine de¬ 
partments by immense majorities. Selecting as his 
constituency the lower Rhine, he came back to Paris, 
not, indeed, as Dictator, but as the first citizen, the 
first statesman, the most conspicuous man in France. 
His subsequent career involves matters of intense 
interest in his own country, but not so well ap¬ 
preciated elsewhere. We note some of its events 
145 



Essays. 

with some account of other actors in those shifting 
scenes. 

Thiers, who had made many mistakes since enter¬ 
ing public life in 1830, but who had been the life¬ 
long friend of that Samson so often blinded and 
mocked—the workingman of France, able and de¬ 
vout, and softened with years, had become the head of 
the State and negociated the peace. Gambetta, whose 
pen took up work while his voice was resting, sup¬ 
ported the President with all his heart. Without his 
support Thiers could have done nothing; and con¬ 
sidering that he had once called Gambetta a raving 
madman, such support was generous and patriotic. 
Gambetta was no dreamer. lie was an opportunist: 
one who holds that wdiat is best under the circum¬ 
stances is best; that the demand and the possibility 
of the hour must shape the policy of the hour. For 
the next seven years he showed a fine discretion in 
his energy. 

Thiers wished careful economy and silent prepara¬ 
tion for a sudden spring to recover the lost provinces 
on the Rhine. Gambetta, fifty years 3 T ounger, was 
cooler. He wished to build up France, and let to¬ 
morrow take care of its own opportunities. Thiers 
was prejudiced; ungenerously letting (if not inciting) 
poisonous tongues to arouse hostility against the 
young Dictator—for such he morally remained. Gam¬ 
betta took a wise and noble course. Being convinced 
146 



Gambetta. 


that a Republic, dominant over all enemies and safe 
from all reactions, was the needed form of govern¬ 
ment, he made a union among its friends on a policy 
broad enough to win even Thiers and his supporters. 
He was not wholly clear of that besetment of French 
politicians—intolerance of opposition and tyranny 
over minorities; but he tried to deal fairly. 

In all this long struggle to found the Republic, he 
shone as a master in politics. Five such years (1872 
—1877) can be found in no political life in our centu¬ 
ry. His faculty for politics, to seize the main point 
and bring it out in fulness and breadth of variation 
yet always keep it discernable, seems like that of 
Mozart for music. He knew every phase of class in- 
t:rest and and feeling between the Channel and the 
Pyrenees; he detected the currents of public feeling 
as our Signal Service detects the weather-waves; he 
could touch at the right time and place every politi¬ 
cal leader in Paris or the provinces. Party organiza¬ 
tion, thorough and constant discussion, and the 
diligent use of his journal, the Republique Francaise , 
were his methods of influence. His marvellous ora¬ 
tory served a mass meeting of peasants in the country 
or of blouse-clad workingmen in town as effectually 
as it served the refined classes who, though they 
called him loose and stumbling, were swept by his 
warmth and energy. His very tones, like a bugle-call, 
could animate or restrain. He was master of that 
147 




HJssays . 


art in rhetoric so effective upon Frenchmen, of crowd¬ 
ing into one clean phrase some telling sentiment, 
some motto easily caught and quoted, which going 
from lip to lip, became from one man’s wit many 
men’s wisdom. Many of us heard from beyond the 
Atlantic his utterances of tongue and pen; and we 
recall our lively impressions of his skill and power in 
both politics and oratory. The principles for which 
he was pleading were few: a permanent republic, a 
representative parliament, education free, universal, 
and secular, a strong army, commerce wide and un¬ 
trammeled. 

When Thiers fell from power, France was in a 
crisis. The enemies of the yet unformed Republic 
secured McMahon as President. Under him the plan 
was formed to rear a throne, and in due time place a 
king upon it. The plot had the natural support of 
the nobility and of those twenty five millions of plod¬ 
ding countrymen, the stay of French industry, averse 
to change, and gravitating to the Church. The radi¬ 
cal Left, too, those terribles, led by such as Louis 
Blanc, held that Gambetta’s Republic was only a 
monarchy elective once in seven years. In fact, all 
government since Napoleon’s fall had to this date 
been provisional: a permanent one had yet to be 
formed. At this time Gambetta did France his 
greatest service. He toiled night and day to teach 
the people what the ballot is; what voting means; 
148 



Gambetta . 


why a government should be represenative, and how 
France could prosper with no other. In all his ener¬ 
gy of conviction, and at the head of the very party of 
impatience, he was generous and conciliatory, by 
.turns bold and prudent. He taught the French 
masses the simplest principles, and confuted kindly 
those who could see the public welfare safe only in 
the hands of king or emperor. His two points to be 
gained were the right of the Assembly to give France 
a constitution and the acceptance of the Constitution 
of 1875. His efforts, so unwearied, were at last suc¬ 
cessful. 

It was a succession of strange scenes in February 
1872, w hen the Republic came into being. Peace hath 
its victories; but rarely has one man in time of peace 
been able to harmonize factions so utterly and bitter¬ 
ly antagonistic. The Right Centre was sternly oppos¬ 
ed to all republican institutions; the Left held that 
“the sovereignty of the nation consists in the univer¬ 
sality of the citizen; ” which means, being translated, 
that polity of the Commune whose centre is every¬ 
where. Yet, on February 25th was formed, by votes 
two to one in the Assembly, a conservative Republic 
with a strong Executive and a strong Senate. Sixty 
of the seventy-five life Senators were won from foes 
to friends, and its first Ministers were of the mild 
type of Dufaure—still at four score an active patriot. 
Gambetta worked on, and consulted widely and can- 
149 



Essays. 


didly in forming this Constitution; and was convinced 
of its fitness to consolidate and develope the Republic. 

Its formation is the most extraordinary event in 
his career. Of the Constitution of 1848 the Due de 
Broglie had said after one day: 11 ne marche pas ! 
Gambetta’s Republic is yet in motion: and who can 
say it does not move fairly ? 

Counting his work not yet secure, he followed up 
his task of instructing the people—chifefly the labor- 
ing classes—in their duties and privileges under the 
new government. There was indeed danger. Mc¬ 
Mahon was strongly Napoleonic and his wife a 
zealous Romanist. He, as a military man, felt sure 
of the army; and, believing himself strong in the 
reactionary parties, he (May 1877) dismissed his min¬ 
istry, desolved the chambers, and even contemplated 
a coup d'etat. 

Gambetta, closely allied with Thiers (it w r as the 
veteran’s last effort), took the leadership of the Re¬ 
publicans, held them in perfect order, and brought 
from the ballot box a decisive victory. McMahon first 
submitted, and then resigned. Gambetta was again 
master of France. Grevy, a true Republican, became 
President; Gambetta was president of the chamber 
of Deputies. He was now* in his zenith. As he him 
self said: “The era of dangers is past; that of 
difficulties is beginning.” We shall see him criticized 
and attacked, growing unpopular, making mistakes. 
150 



Gambetta 


He had been a man of action rather than of 
thought, and he was now at a loss for clear and pre¬ 
cise views on questions of daily policy. He could face 
a great crisis, and he had a strong sense of the 
country’s general wants, but he was worried by de¬ 
tails. Called by Grevy to the head of the Ministry, 
the Republicans, partly through his fault, divided 
and broke under him. He retired to await a more 
favorable time: he was not very patient; he had be¬ 
come fond of power and loved to ride on full flowing 
applause. While studying to confirm the Republic it 
is clear that he looked to being Grevy’s successor, as 
to a golden afternoon. Animated by this twofold im¬ 
pulse, he bated not a jot of heart or hope but steered 
right onward. In oratory he was yet superb. From 
his mouth came, as from the Gaulish god, Ogmius, 
chains tunefully clanking to bind all listeners: words, 
look, tone, and gesture, like a quartette, in perfect 
music, were still in majestic proportion. Actors 
studied him; the Bishop of Orleans, his opponent, 
declared with tears that the Church had lost in him 
a Peter the Hermit. But at forty he was more worn 
than Thiers had been at seventy. The conduct of his 
journal became now his chief employment. Its clear 
strong putting of questions, in the fervor of patriot¬ 
ism which none doubted, questions vital to the 
welfare of France, was in effect a continual training 
of the people; not only in the nature of true liberty 
151 



but also in the use of suffrage, in the rights of mi¬ 
norities, in the proper functions of departments, and 
in the distinction between Church and State. So in 
his less conspicuous, indeed, weaker years, he did 
what has proved a useful work in developing among 
his countrymen a habit of intelligent, self-centered 
sentiment on public affairs, above the spasm of 
passion, above unthinking servility to demagogues. 

What were some features of his public policy ? One 
was of a doubtful nature, but it is continually coming 
for a hearing before our American public. It is in 
France a relic from the days when the peasant charg¬ 
ed even an untimely frost upon the government. He 
held that to prevent oppression of the citizen, the 
State should have absolute control of all vested inter¬ 
ests—all that were by their nature beyond the hand 
of the individual owner: as business corporations, 
railroads, and the like. Advocacy of this subject once 
caused Gambetta to leave the Ministry, but since his 
death even his opponents are discussing it as possibly 
a wise measure. He was urgent to make the army as 
strong as possible. The army in France, as in all 
Europe, is a ruinous drain upon industry, production, 
and revenue, Gambetta was not a military man, but 
under his influence a system was adopted by which 
France can put into the field a million and a half of 
men, well armed and fairly drilled, and keep in re¬ 
serve as many more. 


152 



Gambetta. 


Among his chief political efforts was the last one of 
his life. He wished the Constitution so amended as 
to allow electoral districts to take candidates from 
any part of the country. He held that by restricting 
the representation to residents of the districts, the 
Chamber would have from the country second rate 
men of local influence, and from the towns the wild¬ 
est Radicals, and as these must please their constitu¬ 
ents they might not serve well the country at large. 
His plan was a little like that by which minority 
representation is secured, the votes being for a list of 
names and the highest being taken—called scrutin 
de liste. 

This plan was reasonable. While forming it he was 
not in office, but concerned in everything. He was 
advised of all that happened; he was consulted by 
the ministers; he recommended appointments. The 
scrutin de liste looked like a mode of making perma¬ 
nent and systematic this personal influence, a possible 
government by his officials. He had then a singular 
experience. In July 1881 there was a loud call for a 
Gambetta ministry. No one seemed to doubt the 
correctness of his policy, least of all to question his 
motives, or his patriotism. He formed a ministry of 
the best men of his own views, but suspicion was 
aroused. He seemed despotic and arbitrary; his 
working at the scrutin de liste was thought to be a 
paving of the way to dictatorship. 

153 



Essays. 

In two months he fell from office. In November 
none wanted the man for w’hom they had clamored in 
July. Even old friends turned against him. Sic 
transit / He never held office again. 

Strangely enough, he began at once to recover in¬ 
fluence. In July 1882 the minister following him (his 
old friend, Freycinet) in his turn fell. Gambetta 
would have been recalled, but he and the Chamber 
were yet at swords’ points over the scrutin de liste. 
Then was seen the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left 
out; a ministry under Gambetta’s counsel and 
control, guided by his instincts, experience, and intel¬ 
ligence—and Gambetta not of their number. His 
return to power seemed sure and early. 

The political career now ended. This fall from 
office had nothing to do w r ith his rapid decline in 
health. The post-mortem examination showed that 
disease had long been consuming him. 

Of Gambetta’s private morals and personal habits 
little that one might wish to say can be said. He had 
his share of vanity, of self-indulgence, and of ungod¬ 
liness. Not of dissipating ways, his early breaking 
must be set mostly to the account of bad living, not 
of hard working. He was living with one not his wife, 
wffio did not wish so to be. There can be no apology 
for his lack of religious faith. Yet, he had religious 
thoughts. Littre, the highest authority in French 
philology, had been an atheist; but in his last illness 
154 



Gambetta 


he had sought the Savior and the sacraments. Some 
one asked Gambetta if he did not think this a weak¬ 
ness in Littre: and was solemnly answered, “I 
cannot say how human destinies may look to one near 
the borders of this life.” 

Gambetta’s public life was above reproach. After a 
career as Dictator at Tours and Bordeaux, charges of 
gaining “ vast monies ” by his office were sifted by a 
Commission of his enemies. The President of the 
Commission, the Duke Audiffret-Pasquier, his oppon¬ 
ent in politics, gave publicly the result—“ He is an 
honest man.” Tn all his life not a penny was known 
to come crookedly to his pocket. At his death his 
journal property may have been worth half a million 
francs: he had no other estate, and how great had 
been his opportunities ! In his manners he was often 
vulgar; vain of being noticed; desired large sympathy 
and response, which made the details of policy 
and even of public life, irksome to him. More at 
home in storms and tempests, he loved passionate 
mastery over great emergencies; and longed, for he 
felt himself able to 

“Ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm.” 

As human life and energies go, Gambetta was at 
his meridian in 1878. In the preceding year he had 
won, as we have seen, the greatest victory of peace 
that France has ever had. Thiers had just died: none 
seemed to compete with Gambetta for the first place 
155 




Assays. 


in the popular favor. The Republic, the best govern 
ment France has yet had, was acknowledged as his 
work, and he the greatest man in France. At the 
Exposition of that year he was the one all Frenchmen 
and foreigners struggled to see: for the time he was 
the cynosure, the demigod. For fame’s sake he 
should have died; he had touched the highest point 
of all his greatness and his decline began; his 
health failed during 1882; and suddenly he died, ap¬ 
parently by a revolver which he seemed feebly (not 
suicidally) handling. 

Instantly three great thoughts, or memories, ab¬ 
sorbed all minds: 

1. They reflected how he rose to the help of France 
when darkness curtained the hills and the tempest 
was abroad in its anger. That voice rang out in the 
gloom; it roused and heartened peasant, artisan, and 
noble; it moved them to the field and formed them 
in the ranks of war. Treason and infirmity of pur¬ 
pose among Frenchmen had served as allies to the 
Germans. lie brought against the foe sincerity, 
courage, sacrifice; and led the war from the midnight 
of despair to the dawn of hope and the rising of 
peace. 

2. They remembered how he had effectively built 
the Republic. From fiery Radicals and Communists, 
from surly Imperialists and Orleanists, from the 
volatiles of Paris and the immovables of the rural dis- 

156 



Gambetta. 


tricts, he had fused and cast a State. It was strong, 
if not harmonious, abiding like the rockingstones of 
the Druids, capable of agitation yet not to be over¬ 
thrown. All respected, and most approved his work 
as a builder. The details were not all his, but they 
knew that his had been the constructive energy, the 
toil, the suffering; and that his monument was their 
State. 

3. They felt that he was the very embodiment of 
his period, wearing the distinct lines and lineaments 
of France as her veriest child. His statue might 
stand as her ideal representative, so perfectly had his 
Italian stock been naturalized. His era was the only 
era and France the only land that could have produc¬ 
ed such a man. Gambetta for twelve years was 
France. He was conspicuous on her horizon far and 
wide. Even his enemies felt that he was more than 
a Frenchman ; he was the Frenchman. The very po¬ 
lar star around which they all revolved was quenched 
out of their sky, and in their day there could be no 
second Gambetta. So ran the thoughts of the sad 
and reverent throngs that felt a gloom beneath the 
sunshine and amid the charms of Pere le Chaise. 

Contributions, copious as the vernal rains in the 
vale where he was born, would have come unsolicited 
to build for his remains a tomb that a king might 
envy; that he might sleep in marble among the great 


157 



Essays. 

of the land: but his father claimed for himself the 
control of his sepulture. 

At Nice, a town once of Italy but now of France, 
and so befitting a Frenchman of Italian origin, a 
tomb has been erected at public cost. It looks south¬ 
ward, far over the bright waters of the Mediterranean. 
Here the father, following in an inverted order the 
son whom he should have preceded, bows his head in 
sorrow for the consummate flower of his house. 

During the genial winters of Nice, statesmen are 
wont to find there brief respite from public toil and 
care. Gladstone has there found relief from London 
fogs and official burdens. How must the thoughts 
of such a man stir at Gambetta’s tomb! The great¬ 
est of Englishmen at the grave of the greatest of 
Frenchmen! So Julius Csesar sat at Alexander’s 
tomb, and held in his hand the Macedonian’s heart. 
The Englishman, calm and firm as a slowly declining 
star after fifty steady, luminous years: the French¬ 
man fiercely flaming out, flush of his beams for some 
dozen years, burnt out—and vanished! Each had 
his work in the needs of his land and in the provi 
dence of God: how great the contrast! 

We must take our leave of this marvelous man—so 
fascinating even across the wide Atlantic; and amid 
the noise and absorbing interests of another conti¬ 
nent. Gambetta should not be to us 

“A schoolboy’s tale, the wonder of an hour.” 

It is not merely because he has in these years lately 

158 -O 



Gambetta. 


passed outstripped his countrymen in the race for 
glory’s goal, has won, and quickly gone. Since the 
world began mighty men have done that, and then 
gone glimmering through the dream of things that 
were. It is because Gambetta has for his fleeting 
day—which is our day—been the foremost man of all 
this world; because he took a great Nation at its 
plastic epoch, and before our very eyes moulded it 
well and firmly. Such an epoch and such a man 
come to us not twice. It is not well for us to let 
them fall away unheeded, or half heeded, into “ the 
dark backward and abysm of time.” 


FINIS. 













































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